QQ

QQ (pocket queens) wins 79.9% of the time against a single random opponent, which places it 3th out of the 169 starting hands — the top 1.8% of the range. At a six-handed table (five opponents) its equity falls to 38.1% and its rank moves to 3; nine-handed (eight opponents) it holds 24.5% for rank 3. 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 KK at 82.5% and one place below is JJ at 77.5%. 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, QQ is a favourite against 166 of them and an underdog against 2. Its best matchup is Q2o at 94.4% and its worst is KK at 18.2% — a spread of 76.2 points, which is why calling QQ simply "strong" or "weak" says very little.

QQ 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 3 of 13. The strongest hand in that group, AA, is 5.3 points away, and the weakest, 22, sits 29.7 points below. Measured against the average equity of all 169 hands, 51%, QQ lands +28.9 points from the middle of the pack, and 2 hands in the full ranking are still ahead of it.

Adding players costs equity steadily: 79.9% against one opponent, 65.0% against two, 44.9% against four and 24.5% against eight. That last figure is 221% of an even nine-way share (11.1%). The Chen formula scores this hand at 14 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 QQ reads as 79.9% 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.