AA

AA (pocket aces) wins 85.2% of the time against a single random opponent, which places it 1th out of the 169 starting hands — the top 0.6% of the range. At a six-handed table (five opponents) its equity falls to 49.2% and its rank moves to 1; nine-handed (eight opponents) it holds 34.5% for rank 1. A premium pair — ahead of almost every other hand before the flop.

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 — and one place below is KK at 82.5%. 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, AA is a favourite against 168 of them and an underdog against 0. Its best matchup is A9o at 93.9% and its worst is 65s at 77.6% — a spread of 16.3 points, which is why calling AA simply "strong" or "weak" says very little.

AA 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 77.6%. The table further down lists all 168 opponents individually.

Within the 13 pocket pairs it comes 1 of 13. The strongest hand in that group, AA, is 0 points away, and the weakest, 22, sits 35 points below. Measured against the average equity of all 169 hands, 51%, AA lands +34.2 points from the middle of the pack, and 0 hands in the full ranking are still ahead of it.

Adding players costs equity steadily: 85.2% against one opponent, 73.5% against two, 55.9% against four and 34.5% against eight. That last figure is 311% of an even nine-way share (11.1%). The Chen formula scores this hand at 20 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 AA reads as 85.2% 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.