KQs vs QJo

When KQs and QJo get all in before the flop, KQs wins 75.1% of the time and QJo takes 24.9%. Broken down, KQs wins outright 73.8%, chops 2.4% and loses 23.7% — a margin of 50.1 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 74.8% (for example Ks Qs against Qh Js); with no shared suit it is 75.2% (Ks Qs against Qh Jd). That is a spread of 0.34 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 KQs 48.3%, QJo 21.3%, random 30.4%. KQs gives up 26.8 points and QJo gives up 3.7, 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, KQs is worth 63.4% against a random hand (rank 16 of 169) and QJo is worth 58.0% (rank 39). The gap between them in the ranking is only 5.4 points, yet head to head the gap is 50.1 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, KQs scoops roughly 74 pots, splits about 2, and loses the remaining 24. Against eight random opponents rather than this one specific hand, KQs would be down to 20.4% and QJo to 15.2%, so the shape of this particular confrontation matters far more than either hand's standing in the overall ranking.

From QJo's side, 24.9% is the break-even point for calling an all-in at 3.02:1 pot odds. Put another way, the call is profitable as long as the amount you have to put in is less than 24.9% of the pot you are playing for. KQs holds the other 75.1% 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 QJo really does hold exactly QJo; against the wider range a player would actually get all in with, KQs's 75.1% moves. Use the individual pages for KQs and QJo to see how each of them fares against all 168 other holdings before treating this single pairing as the whole picture.