77

77 (pocket sevens) wins 66.3% of the time against a single random opponent, which places it 9th out of the 169 starting hands — the top 5.3% of the range. At a six-handed table (five opponents) its equity falls to 22.0% and its rank moves to 34; nine-handed (eight opponents) it holds 14.6% for rank 39. 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 AKs at 67.2% and one place below is AQs at 66.2%. 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, 77 is a favourite against 157 of them and an underdog against 11. Its best matchup is 72o at 93.5% and its worst is 88 at 18.2% — a spread of 75.3 points, which is why calling 77 simply "strong" or "weak" says very little. 5 opponents land inside one point of a coinflip, the closest being T9s at 50.0%.

77 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 18.2%. The table further down lists all 168 opponents individually.

Within the 13 pocket pairs it comes 8 of 13. The strongest hand in that group, AA, is 18.9 points away, and the weakest, 22, sits 16.1 points below. Measured against the average equity of all 169 hands, 51%, 77 lands +15.3 points from the middle of the pack, and 8 hands in the full ranking are still ahead of it.

Adding players costs equity steadily: 66.3% against one opponent, 46.5% against two, 26.9% against four and 14.6% against eight. That last figure is 132% of an even nine-way share (11.1%). The Chen formula scores this hand at 7 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 77 reads as 66.3% 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.