KQs vs ATo: preflop equity

The exact count puts ATo at 56.41% and KQs at 43.59% when the two hands see all five board cards.

KQs

43.59%

Wins 43.35%, ties 0.47%

ATo

56.41%

Wins 56.18%, ties 0.47%

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

KQs against ATo: the numbers

Exact preflop results for KQs against ATo, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
KQs43.3530.47056.17743.588
ATo56.1770.47043.35356.412

KQs and ATo are a suited hand and an offsuit hand, in that order. The two hands share no rank, which makes this a pure matchup of card strength, straight chances and flush chances.

A 12.82 point lead is real, and KQs still takes about 433 of every 1,000 deals outright. 0.47% of boards are ties, so the equity of each hand is its win rate plus half of that.

For context, KQs sits at number 16 of 169 starting hands and ATo at number 19 when each is run against a random hand.

Boards behind the percentages: 82,190,592 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
KQs35,632,000386,00046,172,000
ATo46,172,000386,00035,632,000

48 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.

KQs against ATo read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
KQs0.7732.3071.7801.294
ATo1.2941.7802.3070.773

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

Low rainbow flops (nine high or lower) are the best for ATo (73.17%); rainbow flops topped by a ten or better are the worst (51.78%). ATo stays ahead on all five textures, but the swing between them is large, so how the flop looks matters a great deal.

KQs against ATo by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flopsKQs winsTiesATo winsKQs equity
Rainbow, ten or higher23.26048.1630.11251.72548.219
Rainbow, nine or lower7.77026.3370.99072.67326.832
Two-tone46.66745.4390.29954.26245.588
Monotone5.21244.6772.38352.94045.869
Paired17.09138.4420.60460.95438.744

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

Each hand has a baseline against a random hand: 63.40% for KQs, 62.72% for ATo. Here the change is -19.81 and -6.31 points.

KQs and ATo here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
KQs, all flops43.58863.400-19.8120.68751
KQs, rainbow, ten or higher48.21963.400-15.1810.76055
KQs, rainbow, nine or lower26.83263.400-36.5680.42322
KQs, two-tone45.58863.400-17.8120.71905
KQs, monotone45.86963.400-17.5310.72349
KQs, paired38.74463.400-24.6560.61110
ATo, all flops56.41262.722-6.3100.89940
ATo, rainbow, ten or higher51.78162.722-10.9410.82556
ATo, rainbow, nine or lower73.16862.722+10.4461.16654
ATo, two-tone54.41262.722-8.3100.86751
ATo, monotone54.13162.722-8.5910.86303
ATo, paired61.25662.722-1.4660.97663

Does a shared suit matter?

Looking only at deals where the hands share a suit, ATo has 56.90%; looking only at deals where they do not, 55.93%. ATo does better with a shared suit, by 0.97 points.

KQs against ATo by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of dealsKQs winsTiesATo winsKQs equity
Share a suit2450.0042.8460.51156.64343.102
No shared suit2450.0043.8590.42955.71244.074

How often this matchup comes up

You will meet this exact matchup 0.0059% of the time in a random heads-up deal: 96 of 1,624,350, counting either seat order.

A worked example

Say each player puts $100 in before the flop, making a $200 pot. On average ATo takes back $112.82 of it, which is $12.82 more than it put in, and KQs takes back $87.18, $12.82 less than it put in.

Per 1,000 deals: ATo wins about 562, KQs wins about 433, and about 5 end in a split pot.

The same matchup from the other side

The mirror image, ATo against KQs, is 56.41% to 43.59%, and its address redirects to this page.

The calculator link fills in KsQs against AhTd, a deal where the two hands share no suit. Change any card to test your own hand. The neighboring matchups below swap one of the two hands for one of similar strength.

How this was computed

All 1,712,304 five-card boards are dealt for every suit pattern among the 48 specific deals of KQs against ATo, and both hands are scored on each. That is a full count, so the percentages are exact. Ties are half a win each, and each board appears once per flop it contains.

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

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