AQs vs A9s: preflop equity

AQs against A9s: the numbers

Each side holds one of the suited hands: AQs and A9s. Because the hands share one rank, the one with the higher kicker is ahead when that rank pairs and the other hand is mostly drawing.

That is a clear edge, 70.66% to 29.34%, but A9s still wins often enough that one hand proves nothing. A split pot comes up on 5.33% of boards, so the wins and the equity differ by half of that.

The hand ranking puts AQs at 10 and A9s at 18 out of 169 starting hands.

12 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

The flop changes the picture. AQs does best on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better, at 77.00%, and worst on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower), at 59.69%. AQs stays ahead on all five textures, but the swing between them is large, so how the flop looks matters a great deal.

A rainbow flop shows three suits, a two-tone flop repeats one suit, a monotone flop is a single suit, and a paired flop repeats a rank.

Compared with a random hand

Start from the random-hand figures, 66.21% for AQs and 62.78% for A9s. This opponent changes them by +4.45 and -33.44 points.

Does a shared suit matter?

These two classes cannot share a suit in any legal deal, so there is only one row to read: AQs holds 70.66% in every deal of this matchup.

How often this matchup comes up

AQs against A9s is made up of 12 specific-card matchups in one seat order, 0.0007% of the 1,624,350 ordered deals, and 24 counting both seat orders, 0.0015%.

A worked example

With $100 from each side, the $200 pot is split on average as $141.32 for AQs and $58.68 for A9s; the first side gains $41.32 per all-in and the second gives up $41.32.

A thousand deals look like this: AQs takes 680, A9s takes 267, 53 are ties.

The same matchup from the other side

A9s against AQs adds nothing new: it is 29.34% for A9s and 70.66% for AQs, the same figures reversed.

Keep exploring

Open the calculator with AsQs against Ah9h 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.

• Open AsQs against Ah9h in the equity calculator
• AQs combos
• A9s combos
• AQs vs ATo
• AQs vs KJs
• AJs vs A9s
• All hand matchups