---
title: "A8s vs 43s: preflop equity"
url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a8s-vs-43s.md"
canonical_url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a8s-vs-43s"
last_updated: "2026-10-23"
type: "reference"
summary: "A8s is a big favorite over 43s before the flop: 63.36% to 36.64% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit."
related: ["https://georgelipoker.com/equity/kts-vs-43s.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a8s-vs-53s.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/kjs-vs-43s.md"]
---

# A8s vs 43s: preflop equity

A8s is a big favorite over 43s before the flop: 63.36% to 36.64% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit.

If A8s and 43s get all the chips in before the flop, A8s owns 63.36% of the pot in the long run and 43s owns 36.64%.

## A8s against 43s: the numbers

**Exact preflop results for A8s against 43s, in percent**

| Hand | Wins | Ties | Loses | Equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A8s | 63.071 | 0.571 | 36.358 | 63.356 |
| 43s | 36.358 | 0.571 | 63.071 | 36.644 |

A8s meets 43s, and both are suited hands. With no overlap in ranks, every card that pairs one hand is a card that does not pair the other.

That is a modest edge, the kind that shows up over many hands and is easy to miss in one. A split pot comes up on 0.57% of boards, so the wins and the equity differ by half of that.

Among the 169 starting hands, A8s is number 21 and 43s is number 150 by strength against a random hand.

**Boards behind the percentages: 27,396,864 counted in all**

| Hand | Boards won, about | Boards tied, about | Boards lost, about |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A8s | 17,279,000 | 156,000 | 9,961,000 |
| 43s | 9,961,000 | 156,000 | 17,279,000 |

The board total is exact, 16 deals at 1,712,304 boards each. Won, tied and lost counts are rounded to the nearest thousand from the five-decimal percentages.

**A8s against 43s read as odds**

| Hand | Equity as odds (to 1) | Wins one deal in | Loses one deal in | Pot odds needed to call (to 1) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A8s | 1.729 | 1.586 | 2.750 | 0.578 |
| 43s | 0.578 | 2.750 | 1.586 | 1.729 |

The final column gives the least the pot must offer for each unit called for a call to break even at this equity.

## Who is ahead on which flops

The flop changes the picture. A8s does best on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better, at 66.31%, and worst on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower), at 51.32%. A8s stays ahead on all five textures.

**A8s against 43s by flop texture, in percent**

| Flop | Share of flops | A8s wins | Ties | 43s wins | A8s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Rainbow, ten or higher | 25.220 | 66.191 | 0.239 | 33.570 | 66.310 |
| Rainbow, nine or lower | 5.689 | 50.873 | 0.889 | 48.238 | 51.317 |
| Two-tone | 46.727 | 62.383 | 0.322 | 37.295 | 62.544 |
| Monotone | 5.273 | 58.499 | 3.653 | 37.848 | 60.325 |
| Paired | 17.091 | 65.818 | 0.686 | 33.496 | 66.161 |

Rainbow flops have three suits, two-tone flops repeat one suit, monotone flops are all one suit, and paired flops repeat a rank.

## Compared with a random hand

Relative to a random opponent, A8s changes by +1.42 points (baseline 61.94%) and 43s by -2.00 points (baseline 38.64%).

**A8s and 43s here compared with each against a random hand, in percent**

| Case | Equity here | Against a random hand | Change in points | Times the random-hand equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A8s, all flops | 63.356 | 61.944 | +1.412 | 1.02279 |
| A8s, rainbow, ten or higher | 66.310 | 61.944 | +4.366 | 1.07048 |
| A8s, rainbow, nine or lower | 51.317 | 61.944 | -10.627 | 0.82844 |
| A8s, two-tone | 62.544 | 61.944 | +0.600 | 1.00969 |
| A8s, monotone | 60.325 | 61.944 | -1.619 | 0.97386 |
| A8s, paired | 66.161 | 61.944 | +4.217 | 1.06808 |
| 43s, all flops | 36.644 | 38.642 | -1.998 | 0.94829 |
| 43s, rainbow, ten or higher | 33.690 | 38.642 | -4.952 | 0.87185 |
| 43s, rainbow, nine or lower | 48.683 | 38.642 | +10.041 | 1.25985 |
| 43s, two-tone | 37.456 | 38.642 | -1.186 | 0.96931 |
| 43s, monotone | 39.675 | 38.642 | +1.033 | 1.02673 |
| 43s, paired | 33.839 | 38.642 | -4.803 | 0.87571 |

## Does a shared suit matter?

Of the deals of this matchup, 4 share a suit (A8s at 65.72%) and 12 do not (62.57%). A8s does better with a shared suit, by 3.15 points.

**A8s against 43s by suit overlap, in percent**

| Deals | Specific deals | Share of deals | A8s wins | Ties | 43s wins | A8s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Share a suit | 4 | 25.00 | 65.398 | 0.646 | 33.956 | 65.721 |
| No shared suit | 12 | 75.00 | 62.295 | 0.546 | 37.159 | 62.568 |

## How often this matchup comes up

The class pair covers 16 combinations of specific cards in a fixed seat order, 0.0010% of 1,624,350, and 32 (0.0020%) in either order.

## A worked example

Say each player puts $100 in before the flop, making a $200 pot. On average A8s takes back $126.72 of it, which is $26.72 more than it put in, and 43s takes back $73.28, $26.72 less than it put in.

Scaled to 1,000 deals, that is roughly 631 wins for A8s, 363 for 43s and 6 chopped pots.

## The same matchup from the other side

One page covers both views. From 43s' side the equity is 36.64%, and from A8s' side it is 63.36%.

## Keep exploring

Try As8s against 4h3h in the calculator: the hands share no suit, and every card can be changed. The links after it are the closest matchups in the ranking.

- [Open As8s against 4h3h in the equity calculator](https://georgelipoker.com/tools/equity-calculator.md#p1=As8s&p2=4h3h)
- [A8s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/a8s.md)
- [43s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/43s.md)
- [KTs vs 43s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/kts-vs-43s.md)
- [A8s vs 53s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a8s-vs-53s.md)
- [KJs vs 43s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/kjs-vs-43s.md)
- [All hand matchups](https://georgelipoker.com/equity.md)

## How this was computed

Method: exact enumeration. The 16 specific deals are grouped by suit pattern, each is run against all 1,712,304 boards, and both seven-card hands are scored. Equity adds half of every tie, and flop textures are tallied over the ten flops inside each board.

Source: our own exact count from the GeorgeLiPoker poker math library. No outside data is used.

## Related

- [KTs vs 43s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/kts-vs-43s.md)
- [A8s vs 53s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a8s-vs-53s.md)
- [KJs vs 43s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/kjs-vs-43s.md)