// matchups · pair blocks a card

JJ vs AJo pocket jacks against ace-jack offsuit

All-in before the flop, pocket jacks wins 68.6% of boards, ace-jack offsuit wins 29.7%, and 1.7% split the pot. JJ is a 2.27 to 1 favourite. These are not samples: the engine dealt every one of the 1,712,304 possible five-card boards for each of the 2 ways the suits can line up, and the working is below.

JJ69.45%equity · wins 68.57%
AJo30.55%equity · wins 29.68%

Equity counts a split pot as half a win for each side, which is why the two equities add to 100% and the two win rates do not.

A pair against a hand holding one of its rank

The pair holds two of the four cards of the rank the other hand shares, so pairing that card is close to impossible and would only give it trips against a set. The underdog mostly needs to pair its other card while the pair does not improve.

Suits change it by 0.19 points

There are 36 ways to deal JJ against AJo without the two hands sharing a card, and they fall into 2 patterns once you ignore which suit is which. Best case for JJ is 69.58% (for example J♣J♦ against A♥J♠), worst is 69.39% (J♣J♦ against A♣J♥). The headline number is the average over all 36, weighted by how many deals share each pattern.

Example dealSuits in commonDeals like itJJ winsSplitAJo winsJJ equity
J♣J♦ vs A♥J♠none12 of 361,176,96528,800506,53969.58%
J♣J♦ vs A♣J♥J–A24 of 361,172,82530,535508,94469.39%

Click any deal to run it in the equity calculator, which counts the same boards in your browser, or add a third hand, a flop or a dead card to it.

How each hand wins

The made hand the winner shows down with, as a share of all boards. JJ wins most often with two pair (31.9% of boards); AJo with pair (13.6%). Splits happen when both hands play the same five cards or make the same hand, mostly straights.

Made handJJ wins with itAJo wins with itSplit with it
Pair23.34%13.59%–
Two pair31.94%8.49%–
Three of a kind6.42%1.79%–
Straight0.00%2.87%1.65%
Flush1.44%1.89%0.05%
Full house5.42%0.95%0.05%
Four of a kind0.00%0.08%0.00%
Straight flush0.02%0.01%0.00%
Total68.57%29.68%1.75%

When calling with AJo is right

If you call an all-in of S with AJo and know you are up against exactly JJ, you win 30.55% of a pot that holds 2S plus whatever dead money D was already in the middle (blinds, antes, earlier bets). Calling breaks even when 30.55% × (2S + D) = S, so D ÷ S = 1 ÷ 0.3055 − 2 = 1.273. A 10 bb shove needs at least 12.7 bb of dead money before calling it with AJo stops losing chips. Nobody shows you their hand, though: against a real shove you are calling a range, and the push/fold charts already account for it.

Open this as a spot: AJo (dealt as A♣J♥, the most common suit pattern) facing a 10 bb all-in with 2.5 bb already in the middle, against a range of exactly JJ. The calculator samples runouts rather than dealing all of them, so expect its equity to land within a few tenths of a point of the exact figure for that deal. Change the pot, the bet or the range and it reprices.

Each hand has its own page with its equity against all 169 starting hands and its push/fold range at every stack depth.

More with JJ or AJo

Other matchups with JJ or AJo
MatchupFirst handSplitSecond handEquity bar
AKo vs JJ43.1%0.4%56.9%
AKs vs JJ46.0%0.4%54.0%
AQo vs JJ43.1%0.4%56.9%
AQs vs JJ45.9%0.4%54.1%
AJo vs TT43.0%0.4%57.0%
KQo vs JJ43.5%0.4%56.5%
AA vs JJ81.1%0.4%18.9%
KK vs JJ81.5%0.4%18.5%

Other pair blocks a card matchups

Other pair blocks a card matchups
MatchupFirst handSplitSecond handEquity bar
AA vs AKo93.2%1.3%6.8%
AA vs AKs87.9%1.3%12.1%
KK vs AKo69.9%0.8%30.1%
KK vs AKs65.9%0.8%34.1%
QQ vs AQo69.7%1.3%30.3%
QQ vs AQs65.7%1.2%34.3%
// how these numbers were computed
  • Exhaustive, not sampled. With four cards dealt, 48 remain, and there are C(48, 5) = 1,712,304 five-card boards. For each suit pattern our Rust engine (the same WebAssembly file the trainer runs) evaluated both seven-card hands on every board and counted wins, splits and losses. The board counts in the suit table are exact; anyone with an enumerator can reproduce them digit for digit.
  • Suit patterns. Two deals are the same pattern when one becomes the other by renaming suits (clubs to hearts, say), which cannot change who wins. Each pattern is enumerated once and weighted by how many of the 36 deals it stands for.
  • Cross-check. The site's independent Monte Carlo matrix (200,000 random boards per matchup, used on the starting-hand pages) has JJ at 69.51% here, 0.06 points from the exact figure. The build fails if any matchup disagrees by more than 0.4 points.
  • All-in preflop only. This is the equity when the money goes in before the flop and five cards are dealt with no more decisions. It says nothing about how the hands play when there is betting left.
  • Raw data: jj-vs-ajo.json and the summary matchups.json, built by tools/build-matchups.mjs.