AKo vs KQs: preflop equity

AKo against KQs: the numbers

AKo and KQs are an offsuit hand and a suited hand, in that order. Sharing a rank is the signature of a dominated hand, since the weaker hand is usually out-kicked when the shared rank shows up.

That is a clear edge, 70.42% to 29.58%, but KQs still wins often enough that one hand proves nothing. Ties are part of the picture: 1.15% of boards end in a split pot, and each side counts that as half a win.

In the ranking of all 169 starting hands, AKo is number 12 and KQs is number 16.

36 specific deals times 1,712,304 boards gives the exact total. The won, tied and lost counts are approximations from the five-decimal percentages, rounded to the nearest thousand.

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

If you know the kind of flop that came, the numbers shift: AKo holds 83.56% on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower) and 65.53% on monotone flops. AKo stays ahead on all five textures, but the swing between them is large, so how the flop looks matters a great deal.

Flop types: rainbow means three different suits, two-tone means one suit twice, monotone means one suit three times, paired means a repeated rank.

Compared with a random hand

Start from the random-hand figures, 65.32% for AKo and 63.40% for KQs. This opponent changes them by +5.10 and -33.82 points.

Does a shared suit matter?

Two kinds of deal exist here. In 12 of them the hands share a suit and AKo holds 71.50%. In 24 they do not, and it holds 69.89%. AKo does better with a shared suit, by 1.61 points.

How often this matchup comes up

Out of 1,624,350 ways to deal two seats two cards each, 36 are AKo in one seat and KQs in the other (0.0022%); with the seats swapped too, 72 (0.0044%).

A worked example

Put $100 each into a $200 pot and deal every board once: AKo averages $140.84 back, ahead of its $100 by $40.84, while KQs averages $59.16, short of its $100 by $40.84.

Scaled to 1,000 deals, that is roughly 698 wins for AKo, 290 for KQs and 12 chopped pots.

The same matchup from the other side

Swap the hands and you get KQs with 29.58% against AKo with 70.42%. We keep one page per matchup, with the better-ranked hand first.

Keep exploring

AsKh against KdQd is a ready-made deal for the calculator, with no suit in common between the hands. The neighboring matchups below replace one hand with another of similar strength.

• Open AsKh against KdQd in the equity calculator
• AKo combos
• KQs combos
• AKo vs 66
• AKo vs A9s
• ATs vs KQs
• All hand matchups