Poker equity calculator
Poker odds calculator: one hand against another, dealt out
Pick two starting hands, hero and villain, and this poker equity calculator deals out 4,000 random boards to see who wins how often. Then check that number against the price you're being offered with the pot odds panel below.
Hero
Villain
AKs vs QQ ยท all-in equity over 4,000 simulated boards
AKs: 46.3% win, 0.5% tie
QQ: 53.2% win, 0.5% tie
Equity (win% + half of tie%): 46.6% for AKs vs 53.4% for QQ.
How do you compare equity with pot odds?
Equity on its own only tells half the story. Whether calling is correct also depends on the price you're being offered, how much you have to put in relative to what's already in the pot. Enter the pot size you're facing (including the bet) and the amount you need to call, and this works out the equity you'd need just to break even.
20.0% equity needed to call
Pot of 100 facing a call of 25: you need to win (or split) at least 20.0% of the time for calling to break even long-run.
Equity clears the price
Your calculated hero equity of 46.6% is above the 20.0% needed to call, based on the numbers above.
What is poker equity?
"Equity" gets thrown around loosely. Your equity in a hand is your share of the pot if the two hands above were simply dealt out to the river right now with no more betting, your win percentage plus half of any tie percentage. It's a snapshot, not a prediction of what will happen, because in a real hand there's almost always more betting to come, which changes the effective decision even when the raw card math doesn't move.
That gap between raw equity and the real decision is where concepts like implied odds and reverse implied odds live. Implied odds account for extra money you stand to win later if you hit your hand, which can justify a call that looks slightly bad on equity alone. Reverse implied odds work the other way, extra money you might lose later even when you do improve, common with hands that make a second-best result look deceptively strong. Neither shows up in the raw percentage above, they're judgment calls layered on top of it.
Under the bonnet: 4,000 boards
A tool that shows equity should explain its own maths, so here it is. This runs a Monte Carlo simulation: 4,000 random five-card boards are dealt against your two chosen hands, a standard poker hand evaluator scores both hands on each board using the best five of the resulting seven cards, and the win, tie and loss counts are converted into percentages. More simulated boards means a more precise number, 4,000 is enough to be accurate to within roughly half a percentage point for most matchups, which is plenty for a real decision. Run the default AK suited against queens a few times and you'll see the figure wobble between roughly 46% and 47.5%; that wobble is the sampling error, and the true value sits around 46%. Suited hands here are assigned specific suits behind the scenes purely to run the simulation correctly, the actual suit chosen doesn't change the answer, only whether the two hero cards (or two villain cards) share a suit or not.
The main limitation: this compares exactly two hands, not a hand against a full opponent range. In a real decision you're rarely certain of your opponent's exact two cards, you're estimating a range of hands they might hold, and true range-based equity work needs a heavier tool than a page like this, the kind of range-versus-range reasoning a proper solver is built for. Use this calculator to sanity-check specific matchups and study hand-vs-hand relationships, not as a live in-hand solver. If you want the quick, no-opponent version of hand strength instead, the Chen formula calculator rates a single hand in isolation in a fraction of a second.
Using it before a close call
Equity is only useful when you compare it with the price you are getting.
FAQ
Equity questions
What is poker equity, exactly?+
Your equity in a hand is your share of the pot if the hand were dealt out to the river right now with no more betting, win percentage plus half of any tie percentage. It's a snapshot of your current chances, not a promise, since more betting and future cards still have to happen.
What pot odds percentage do I need to call?+
It depends entirely on the bet size relative to the pot, there's no fixed number. A common example: facing a half-pot bet, you're getting roughly 3 to 1 on your call, needing about 25% equity to break even. A pot-sized bet needs about 33% equity. The calculator above works out the exact figure for your specific pot and bet size.
Does equity account for future betting rounds?+
No, raw equity assumes the hand goes to showdown with no further betting, which almost never happens. Concepts like implied odds (extra money you might win later) and reverse implied odds (extra money you might lose later) sit on top of raw equity and are part of why a mathematically correct call by equity alone isn't always the correct real-world decision.
How does this calculator work?+
It runs a Monte Carlo simulation: thousands of random five-card boards are dealt against your chosen two hands, a standard poker hand evaluator scores both hands on every board, and the win, tie and loss counts are turned into percentages. It's an estimate that gets more precise with more simulated boards, the same underlying method real equity calculators use, not a lookup table.
Why do suited hands run higher equity than the same cards offsuit?+
A suited hand keeps a flush alive as one of its ways to win, on top of every straight and pair possibility the offsuit version of the same two ranks already has. That extra route to winning typically adds a few percentage points of equity, which is also why the Chen formula gives suited hands a flat bonus.
Why does my hand's equity change so much between the flop and the turn?+
Equity is a live recalculation of your win probability given the cards seen so far, so it swings as information arrives. A flush draw might sit at roughly 35% equity on the flop with two cards to come, drop to somewhere near 20% if the turn misses since only one card is left to complete it, or jump to 100% if it hits. That volatility is normal and expected, not a sign the tool or the maths is wrong.
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