AQs vs AKo

When AQs and AKo get all in before the flop, AQs wins 29.9% of the time and AKo takes 70.1%. Broken down, AQs wins outright 27.6%, chops 4.5% and loses 67.9% — a margin of -40.3 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 one shared suit the number is 29.1% (for example As Qs against Ah Ks); with no shared suit it is 30.3% (As Qs against Ah Kd). That is a spread of 1.19 points across the 36 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 AQs 26.3%, AKo 46.0%, random 27.8%. AQs gives up 3.6 points and AKo gives up 24.2, so the underdog loses more than the favourite does. Extra players always eat into the leader's share faster than into anyone else's.

Taken on their own, AQs is worth 66.2% against a random hand (rank 10 of 169) and AKo is worth 65.4% (rank 12). The gap between them in the ranking is only 0.8 points, yet head to head the gap is 40.3 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, AQs scoops roughly 28 pots, splits about 4, and loses the remaining 68. Against eight random opponents rather than this one specific hand, AQs would be down to 21.1% and AKo to 19.1%, so the shape of this particular confrontation matters far more than either hand's standing in the overall ranking.

From AKo's side, 70.1% is the break-even point for calling an all-in at 0.43:1 pot odds. Put another way, the call is profitable as long as the amount you have to put in is less than 70.1% of the pot you are playing for. AQs holds the other 29.9% of that same pot.

Two caveats keep this figure honest. First, it is showdown equity across all 36 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 AKo really does hold exactly AKo; against the wider range a player would actually get all in with, AQs's 29.9% moves. Use the individual pages for AQs and AKo to see how each of them fares against all 168 other holdings before treating this single pairing as the whole picture.

When the three flop cards are out, AQs is ahead 16.6% of the time and AKo 83.4%, and the two hands are never level on the flop. "Ahead" means the better best-five-card hand from the cards showing plus the two hole cards; draws are not counted.

When AQs leads on the flop, AKo comes back on the turn and river 17.6% of the time. When AKo leads on the flop, AQs turns it around 17.0% of the time. The hand in front holds on to win 78.5% of the time from the flop and 86.4% from the turn (level spots left out).

With the turn out, AQs leads 22.1% and AKo 76.8%. Counted exhaustively, AQs finishes with 29.88% equity (the 29.9% at the top of the page is a 200,000-hand simulation).