AA vs Q9s: preflop equity

The exact count puts AA at 81.08% and Q9s at 18.92% when the two hands see all five board cards.

AA

81.08%

Wins 80.89%, ties 0.38%

Q9s

18.92%

Wins 18.73%, ties 0.38%

Equity counts a tie as half a win. Exact over every board.

AA against Q9s: the numbers

Exact preflop results for AA against Q9s, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
AA80.8930.38118.72681.083
Q9s18.7260.38180.89318.917

AA, a pocket pair, plays Q9s, a suited hand. A pair against two lower cards is a lopsided matchup: the pair is ahead and the other hand has no overcard to catch.

A gap this wide means Q9s is in trouble before the flop and has few good runouts. Ties are part of the picture: 0.38% of boards end in a split pot, and each side counts that as half a win.

In the ranking of all 169 starting hands, AA is number 1 and Q9s is number 43.

Boards behind the percentages: 41,095,296 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
AA33,243,000157,0007,696,000
Q9s7,696,000157,00033,243,000

Exact total: 24 deals times 1,712,304 boards. The other three counts come from the five-decimal percentages and are rounded to the nearest thousand, so read them as approximate.

AA against Q9s read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
AA4.2861.2365.3400.233
Q9s0.2335.3401.2364.286

In the last column, a pot-to-call ratio at or above the figure makes a call break even or better at this equity.

Who is ahead on which flops

Split by what the flop looks like, AA peaks at 86.99% on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower) and bottoms out at 75.38% on monotone flops. AA stays ahead on all five textures.

AA against Q9s by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flopsAA winsTiesQ9s winsAA equity
Rainbow, ten or higher23.86781.7100.15318.13781.787
Rainbow, nine or lower7.04286.4970.99312.51086.993
Two-tone46.54579.1670.31720.51679.326
Monotone5.21274.1722.40623.42275.375
Paired17.33484.1460.00715.84784.149

Read the flop types this way: rainbow has three suits, two-tone has two cards of one suit, monotone has three, and paired repeats a rank.

Compared with a random hand

How much does the opponent matter? Compared with its random-hand 85.20%, AA changes by -4.12 points, and Q9s, from 57.66%, by -38.74.

AA and Q9s here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
AA, all flops81.08385.204-4.1210.95163
AA, rainbow, ten or higher81.78785.204-3.4170.95990
AA, rainbow, nine or lower86.99385.204+1.7891.02100
AA, two-tone79.32685.204-5.8780.93101
AA, monotone75.37585.204-9.8290.88464
AA, paired84.14985.204-1.0550.98762
Q9s, all flops18.91757.664-38.7470.32806
Q9s, rainbow, ten or higher18.21357.664-39.4510.31585
Q9s, rainbow, nine or lower13.00757.664-44.6570.22557
Q9s, two-tone20.67457.664-36.9900.35853
Q9s, monotone24.62557.664-33.0390.42704
Q9s, paired15.85157.664-41.8130.27489

Does a shared suit matter?

Split by suits, the deals give AA 81.70% when the hands overlap in a suit and 80.47% when they do not. AA does better with a shared suit, by 1.23 points.

AA against Q9s by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of dealsAA winsTiesQ9s winsAA equity
Share a suit1250.0081.4860.42218.09281.697
No shared suit1250.0080.3000.33919.36180.470

How often this matchup comes up

AA against Q9s is made up of 24 specific-card matchups in one seat order, 0.0015% of the 1,624,350 ordered deals, and 48 counting both seat orders, 0.0030%.

A worked example

Say each player puts $100 in before the flop, making a $200 pot. On average AA takes back $162.16 of it, which is $62.16 more than it put in, and Q9s takes back $37.84, $62.16 less than it put in.

Out of 1,000 deals you should see around 809 outright wins for AA, 187 for Q9s, and 4 split pots.

The same matchup from the other side

The reversed view, Q9s against AA, shows 18.92% for Q9s and 81.08% for AA. It is the same count, so it redirects here.

Open the calculator with AsAh against Qd9d already entered, a deal with no shared suit, and change any card to try your own hand. The matchups after it each swap one hand for a nearby one in the ranking.

How this was computed

The page is built from a full enumeration: 1,712,304 boards, every suit pattern of the 24 specific deals, both seven-card hands evaluated. A tie is worth half a win to each hand, and a board is tallied under each of its ten possible flops for the texture rows.

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

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