QJo vs K9o: preflop equity

If K9o and QJo get all the chips in before the flop, K9o owns 57.81% of the pot in the long run and QJo owns 42.19%.

QJo

42.19%

Wins 41.85%, ties 0.68%

K9o

57.81%

Wins 57.47%, ties 0.68%

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

QJo against K9o: the numbers

Exact preflop results for QJo against K9o, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
QJo41.8490.67657.47542.187
K9o57.4750.67641.84957.813

Here offsuit hands face each other, QJo on one side and K9o on the other. The two hands share no rank, which makes this a pure matchup of card strength, straight chances and flush chances.

That is a modest edge, the kind that shows up over many hands and is easy to miss in one. Ties are part of the picture: 0.68% of boards end in a split pot, and each side counts that as half a win.

In the ranking of all 169 starting hands, QJo is number 39 and K9o is number 40.

Boards behind the percentages: 246,571,776 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
QJo103,188,0001,667,000141,717,000
K9o141,717,0001,667,000103,188,000

The total is exact: 144 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.

QJo against K9o read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
QJo0.7302.3901.7401.370
K9o1.3701.7402.3900.730

The last column is the smallest pot odds, written as a pot-to-call ratio, at which a call breaks even with this equity.

Who is ahead on which flops

Split by what the flop looks like, K9o peaks at 74.58% on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower) and bottoms out at 51.64% on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better. K9o stays ahead on all five textures, but the swing between them is large, so how the flop looks matters a great deal.

QJo against K9o by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flopsQJo winsTiesK9o winsQJo equity
Rainbow, ten or higher24.11048.2230.27251.50548.359
Rainbow, nine or lower7.04224.9161.00374.08125.417
Two-tone46.60643.1290.42456.44743.341
Monotone5.15143.8991.81054.29144.804
Paired17.09135.7271.45862.81536.456

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 QJo 58.14% and K9o 57.81%. Against each other the change is -15.95 points for QJo and +0.00 for K9o.

QJo and K9o here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
QJo, all flops42.18758.135-15.9480.72567
QJo, rainbow, ten or higher48.35958.135-9.7760.83184
QJo, rainbow, nine or lower25.41758.135-32.7180.43721
QJo, two-tone43.34158.135-14.7940.74552
QJo, monotone44.80458.135-13.3310.77069
QJo, paired36.45658.135-21.6790.62709
K9o, all flops57.81357.812+0.0011.00002
K9o, rainbow, ten or higher51.64157.812-6.1710.89326
K9o, rainbow, nine or lower74.58357.812+16.7711.29010
K9o, two-tone56.65957.812-1.1530.98006
K9o, monotone55.19657.812-2.6160.95475
K9o, paired63.54457.812+5.7321.09915

Does a shared suit matter?

Split by suits, the deals give K9o 57.82% when the hands overlap in a suit and 57.76% when they do not. The two rows differ by only 0.06 points, so suits barely change this matchup.

QJo against K9o by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of dealsQJo winsTiesK9o winsQJo equity
Share a suit12083.3341.8300.69257.47842.176
No shared suit2416.6741.9440.59757.45942.242

How often this matchup comes up

You will meet this exact matchup 0.0177% of the time in a random heads-up deal: 288 of 1,624,350, counting either seat order.

A worked example

With $100 from each side, the $200 pot is split on average as $115.62 for K9o and $84.38 for QJo; the first side gains $15.62 per all-in and the second gives up $15.62.

In 1,000 deals of exactly this matchup, expect about 575 won outright by K9o, about 418 won outright by QJo and about 7 split.

The same matchup from the other side

Swap the hands and you get K9o with 57.81% against QJo with 42.19%. We keep one page per matchup, with the better-ranked hand first.

The calculator link fills in QsJh against Kd9c, 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

We counted every case. Each suit pattern of the 144 specific QJo against K9o deals meets all 1,712,304 boards, and the better five-card hand wins; a split pot is half a win each. The flop table reads each board under all ten of its three-card flops.

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

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