ATo vs 22: preflop equity

ATo against 22: the numbers

ATo, an offsuit hand, plays 22, a pocket pair. A pair against two higher cards is the classic race: the pair is usually a small favorite or close to even, and each overcard that pairs is a way to take the lead.

22 leads by less than 4 points of equity, so the result of any one deal is close to a toss-up. 0.58% of boards are ties, so the equity of each hand is its win rate plus half of that.

ATo ranks number 19 of 169 starting hands, and 22 ranks number 87, by equity against a random hand.

Exact total: 72 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.

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

Break the boards down by their first three cards and 22 is strongest on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower) (76.12%) and weakest on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better (46.06%). 22 is the favorite overall but falls behind on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better and monotone flops.

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

The table below sets each hand against its own random-hand baseline: a change of -14.32 points for ATo, from 62.72%, and +1.27 for 22, from 50.33%.

Does a shared suit matter?

When the hands share a suit, 22 holds 51.52%; when they do not, it holds 52.00%. 22 does better with no shared suit, by 0.48 points.

How often this matchup comes up

You will meet this exact matchup 0.0089% of the time in a random heads-up deal: 144 of 1,624,350, counting either seat order.

A worked example

With $100 from each side, the $200 pot is split on average as $103.20 for 22 and $96.80 for ATo; the first side gains $3.20 per all-in and the second gives up $3.20.

Think in thousands: about 513 of 1,000 go to 22, about 481 go to ATo, and about 6 are chopped.

The same matchup from the other side

If you came looking for 22 against ATo, the numbers are the same with the hands swapped: 51.60% and 48.40%.

Keep exploring

AsTh against 2d2c 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 AsTh against 2d2c in the equity calculator
• ATo combos
• 22 combos
• ATo vs 97s
• ATo vs 87s
• KJs vs 22
• All hand matchups