KK vs 88: preflop equity

Before any board card is dealt, KK holds 80.87% equity against 88, which leaves 88 with 19.13%.

KK

80.87%

Wins 80.68%, ties 0.38%

88

19.13%

Wins 18.94%, ties 0.38%

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

KK against 88: the numbers

Exact preflop results for KK against 88, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
KK80.6810.38018.93980.871
8818.9390.38080.68119.129

Both hands are pocket pairs: KK and 88. Both hands are pairs, so the bigger pair is ahead on every board that does not pair a card below it.

A gap this wide means 88 is in trouble before the flop and has few good runouts. 0.38% of boards are ties, so the equity of each hand is its win rate plus half of that.

The hand ranking puts KK at 2 and 88 at 7 out of 169 starting hands.

Boards behind the percentages: 61,642,944 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
KK49,734,000234,00011,675,000
8811,675,000234,00049,734,000

The total is exact: 36 specific deals times 1,712,304 boards. The three counts are approximate, worked out from the percentages to five decimals and rounded to the nearest thousand.

KK against 88 read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
KK4.2281.2395.2800.237
880.2375.2801.2394.228

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

Paired flops are the best for KK (86.45%); low rainbow flops (nine high or lower) are the worst (67.86%). KK stays ahead on all five textures, but the swing between them is large, so how the flop looks matters a great deal.

KK against 88 by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flopsKK winsTies88 winsKK equity
Rainbow, ten or higher24.59583.4070.21416.37983.514
Rainbow, nine or lower6.31467.3920.94131.66767.862
Two-tone46.36379.5770.34820.07579.751
Monotone5.15274.3881.73023.88275.253
Paired17.57686.3970.10013.50386.447

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

A random hand would give KK 82.40% and 88 69.16%. Against each other the change is -1.53 points for KK and -50.03 for 88.

KK and 88 here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
KK, all flops80.87182.396-1.5250.98149
KK, rainbow, ten or higher83.51482.396+1.1181.01357
KK, rainbow, nine or lower67.86282.396-14.5340.82361
KK, two-tone79.75182.396-2.6450.96790
KK, monotone75.25382.396-7.1430.91331
KK, paired86.44782.396+4.0511.04917
88, all flops19.12969.163-50.0340.27658
88, rainbow, ten or higher16.48669.163-52.6770.23836
88, rainbow, nine or lower32.13869.163-37.0250.46467
88, two-tone20.24969.163-48.9140.29277
88, monotone24.74769.163-44.4160.35781
88, paired13.55369.163-55.6100.19596

Does a shared suit matter?

The suit split reads 81.01% for KK with a shared suit and 80.20% without one. KK does better with a shared suit, by 0.81 points.

KK against 88 by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of dealsKK winsTies88 winsKK equity
Share a suit3083.3380.8060.39718.79781.005
No shared suit616.6780.0540.30019.64680.204

How often this matchup comes up

The class pair covers 36 combinations of specific cards in a fixed seat order, 0.0022% of 1,624,350, and 72 (0.0044%) in either order.

A worked example

With $100 from each side, the $200 pot is split on average as $161.74 for KK and $38.26 for 88; the first side gains $61.74 per all-in and the second gives up $61.74.

Think in thousands: about 807 of 1,000 go to KK, about 189 go to 88, and about 4 are chopped.

The same matchup from the other side

Swap the hands and you get 88 with 19.13% against KK with 80.87%. We keep one page per matchup, with the better-ranked hand first.

KsKh against 8d8c 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.

How this was computed

Nothing here is simulated. The 36 deals of KK against 88 fall into a few suit patterns, each dealt against all 1,712,304 boards, with both best five-card hands compared on every board. Ties give each hand half a win, and the flop rows count a board under each of its ten flops.

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

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