AKo vs KQo

When AKo and KQo get all in before the flop, AKo wins 74.8% of the time and KQo takes 25.2%. Broken down, AKo wins outright 74.3%, chops 1.1% and loses 24.6% — a margin of 49.6 points. Domination — a shared rank turns this into a kicker fight, and kicker fights are lopsided.

The same matchup shifts depending on how the suits overlap. With no shared suit the number is 74.1% (for example As Kh against Kd Qc); with both suits shared it is 75.5% (As Kh against Ks Qh). That is a spread of 1.38 points across the 108 distinct card combinations, and it comes almost entirely from whether the two hands are fighting over the same flush.

Add a third player holding a random hand and the split becomes AKo 48.9%, KQo 22.0%, random 29.0%. AKo gives up 25.9 points and KQo gives up 3.1, so the favourite loses more than the underdog does. Extra players always eat into the leader's share faster than into anyone else's.

Taken on their own, AKo is worth 65.4% against a random hand (rank 12 of 169) and KQo is worth 61.5% (rank 23). The gap between them in the ranking is only 3.9 points, yet head to head the gap is 49.6 points — a reminder that a ranking table and a direct matchup are two different questions.

Framed as a run of one hundred identical all-ins, AKo scoops roughly 74 pots, splits about 1, and loses the remaining 25. Against eight random opponents rather than this one specific hand, AKo would be down to 19.1% and KQo to 16.7%, so the shape of this particular confrontation matters far more than either hand's standing in the overall ranking.

From KQo's side, 25.2% is the break-even point for calling an all-in at 2.97:1 pot odds. Put another way, the call is profitable as long as the amount you have to put in is less than 25.2% of the pot you are playing for. AKo holds the other 74.8% of that same pot.

Two caveats keep this figure honest. First, it is showdown equity across all 108 card combinations with five board cards still to come — there is no fold equity in it, so the value of shoving in practice is usually higher than the raw percentage suggests. Second, it assumes KQo really does hold exactly KQo; against the wider range a player would actually get all in with, AKo's 74.8% moves. Use the individual pages for AKo and KQo to see how each of them fares against all 168 other holdings before treating this single pairing as the whole picture.