22

22 (pocket deuces) wins 50.2% of the time against a single random opponent, which places it 88th out of the 169 starting hands — the top 52.1% of the range. At a six-handed table (five opponents) its equity falls to 15.3% and its rank moves to 105; nine-handed (eight opponents) it holds 12.5% for rank 69. A small pair — cheap to play, huge when it flops a set.

As a pocket pair there is no suited twin; instead there are 6 combinations of it in the deck, so you are dealt it 0.45% of the time (6 of 1,326 two-card hands). The hand ranked one place above is Q5o at 50.2% and one place below is Q2s at 50.1%. Every pocket pair flops a set about 11.8% of the time, so the pecking order among pairs is decided almost entirely before the flop.

Played heads-up against each of the other 168 hands, 22 is a favourite against 105 of them and an underdog against 63. Its best matchup is 72o at 67.4% and its worst is AA at 17.7% — a spread of 49.7 points, which is why calling 22 simply "strong" or "weak" says very little. 8 opponents land inside one point of a coinflip, the closest being A8s at 50.0%.

22 shares a rank with relatively few hands, so it is rarely on the wrong side of a kicker problem. What does hurt it is running into a higher pair, where the number bottoms out at 17.7%. The table further down lists all 168 opponents individually.

Within the 13 pocket pairs it comes 13 of 13. The strongest hand in that group, AA, is 35 points away, and the weakest, 22, sits 0 points below. Measured against the average equity of all 169 hands, 51%, 22 lands -0.8 points from the middle of the pack, and 87 hands in the full ranking are still ahead of it.

Adding players costs equity steadily: 50.2% against one opponent, 30.2% against two, 17.8% against four and 12.5% against eight. That last figure is 113% of an even nine-way share (11.1%). The Chen formula scores this hand at 5 points, and it arrives 0.45% of the time (6 of 1,326 combinations).

One caveat worth repeating: every number on this page assumes the opponent holds a completely random hand and that the pot goes to showdown. Real opponents hold ranges, and a range that has already put money in is stronger than random — which is exactly why 22 reads as 50.2% here but plays worse than that against a raise. Use the 168 rows in the table below to see which specific holdings are the problem, rather than treating the headline figure as a verdict on the hand.