66

66 (pocket sixs) wins 63.3% of the time against a single random opponent, which places it 17th out of the 169 starting hands — the top 10.1% of the range. At a six-handed table (five opponents) its equity falls to 19.9% and its rank moves to 49; nine-handed (eight opponents) it holds 13.7% for rank 51. 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 KQs at 63.4% and one place below is A9s at 62.8%. 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, 66 is a favourite against 155 of them and an underdog against 13. Its best matchup is 62o at 91.8% and its worst is 77 at 18.4% — a spread of 73.4 points, which is why calling 66 simply "strong" or "weak" says very little. 8 opponents land inside one point of a coinflip, the closest being 98s at 50.1%.

66 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 18.4%. The table further down lists all 168 opponents individually.

Within the 13 pocket pairs it comes 9 of 13. The strongest hand in that group, AA, is 21.9 points away, and the weakest, 22, sits 13.1 points below. Measured against the average equity of all 169 hands, 51%, 66 lands +12.3 points from the middle of the pack, and 16 hands in the full ranking are still ahead of it.

Adding players costs equity steadily: 63.3% against one opponent, 43.0% against two, 24.7% against four and 13.7% against eight. That last figure is 123% of an even nine-way share (11.1%). The Chen formula scores this hand at 6 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 66 reads as 63.3% 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.