Equity
Your share of wins if the hand were played out to the end an infinite number of times. It is the basic measure of what your hand is worth right now.
Equity is your expected share of the pot: if this exact hand were dealt a million times, what percentage would you win? It’s not a bet or a promise — it’s pure math on the cards still to come.
The classic example
A♥K♥ against Q♠Q♦ before the flop is the most famous coin flip in poker. Our engine enumerates it exactly: A♥K♥ wins 46.2% of the time. The pair is ahead, but barely — that’s why these matchups are called coin flips.
Other benchmarks worth keeping in your head:
- A♠A♦ against a random hand: 85.3%. Aces are a huge favorite, but they lose one time in seven.
- 2♠2♦ against A♥K♣: 53.0%. Any pair is (slightly) ahead of two unpaired high cards.
What it’s for
Equity only means something compared to the price the pot is offering: if your equity beats your pot odds, calling is profitable in the long run. All of decision poker boils down to that comparison.
Equity against a specific hand is computed exactly by enumeration; against a range it’s weighted across all its combos. You can check any situation in our calculator, which runs on this same engine.