Poker Equity Chart: Common All-In Matchups

How to use the chart

Equity is only ever half of a decision. The other half is the price you are being laid, and the two are compared directly: call when your equity is bigger than the percentage of the final pot your call represents. Facing a shove that puts you in for 40% of the pot you would be playing for, you need 40% equity. Find your matchup above, compare, act.

That comparison is worked out for you by the pot odds calculator, and pot odds explained in full covers the arithmetic from the ground up. For anything not in the table — a real range rather than a single hand, or any board at all — the equity calculator enumerates it exactly.

One warning about the chart itself: it is hand versus hand. Nobody shoves exactly ace-king at you. When you put someone on a range, your equity is the weighted average across every hand in it, and that number is usually much closer to 50% than any single row here suggests. A pair of jacks is 56.8% against ace-king and roughly a coinflip against a range that also contains queens, kings and aces.

Where equity alone misleads

The all-in numbers are exact because an all-in ends the hand. Every other spot has money behind, and money behind is where equity stops telling the whole story.

• Reverse implied odds. Two draws with identical equity are worth different amounts. The nut flush draw gets paid when it hits; the jack-high flush draw wins a small pot from a bluff and loses a large one to the ace. The chart cannot see this, and it is the single most common way a technically correct call loses money.
• Implied odds. The mirror image, and the reason set mining works. A pair of deuces is 17.8% against aces all in, but calling a raise with it preflop is not an all-in — you are paying a small price to hit a set about one time in eight and get paid off.
• Fold equity. Shoving 40% equity into a hand that folds half the time is not a 40% proposition. Equity charts price showdowns; most pots never reach one.
• Extra players. Equity collapses fast multiway. Aces hold about 85% against one random hand, 64% against three and 35% against eight. Every row above assumes exactly one opponent.
• Tournament chips. Near a bubble or at a final table, chips won are worth less than chips lost, so break-even in equity is a loss in money. A 52% coinflip can be a clear fold.

Four numbers worth memorising

Most of the table is reference material you will look up rarely. Four figures cover the vast majority of real decisions, and they are worth knowing cold:

• 82% — the bigger pair, in every pair-over-pair spot.
• Around 55% — a pair against two overcards, sliding from 50% for the smallest pairs to 57% for the biggest.
• 35% — a nine-out flush draw, flop to river. An eight-out straight draw is about 32%, a four-out gutshot about 17%.
• Three points — the value of being suited.

Everything else you can reconstruct at the table from the shape of the matchup, or look up here afterwards. What you cannot reconstruct is whether the number was ever the right question, which is why the sections above spend more space on the exceptions than on the rows.