What this Texas Hold'em odds calculator does
It answers the question every Hold'em player asks after a big pot: how far ahead or behind was I? Type the hands, add the board if there was one, and the calculator plays out every remaining card. Hand against hand on the flop is 990 run-outs; preflop it is 1,712,304 five-card boards, every one of which is dealt and scored. That makes the preflop number for AA vs KK, or any other two hands, exact rather than a simulation, and the same is true for any flop, turn or river spot with known hands.
Where exact enumeration is not possible, which is mostly range-versus-range preflop, it runs Monte Carlo instead and tells you: the method line above the results reads "Monte Carlo" with the trial count and a 95% margin of error, and a Run longer button appears if you want the margin tighter. The engine is the same one that computed the worked examples below, so what you read on this page is what the tool will give you.
How to use it
Everything goes in the three fields at the top. Hands takes two cards per player, separated by spaces, in the usual notation: AhKh QcQd is ace-king of hearts against queens. Add a third, fourth or tenth hand the same way. Board takes the community cards you know, from one to five. Dead cards is for anything removed from the deck that nobody is playing, such as an exposed card or hands shown by players who folded. Press Enter or Calculate; the result updates live as you type once there are two valid hands.
A hand does not have to be fully known. Ah on its own means "ace of hearts and a random card", and xx means a completely random hand, which is how you get the classic "aces against a random hand" number. Ranges go in square brackets using the notation every range tool shares: [22+, A2s+, KTs+, ATo+]. Click Range editor if you would rather paint a 13 by 13 grid, pick a preset, or drag the top-of-range slider; it writes the notation for you and drops it into the field. Pick cards opens a visual deck for anyone who prefers clicking to typing.
Worked examples, computed by this engine
These match-ups come up constantly, and the numbers are exact where the method column says so. Load any of them into the calculator with one click.
| Match-up | Equity | Method | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA vs KKAhAs vs KhKs | 82.64% / 17.36% | Exact · 1.7M deals | Load → |
| AKs vs QQAhKh vs QcQd | 46.21% / 53.79% | Exact · 1.7M deals | Load → |
| AKo vs 22AhKd vs 2c2s | 46.96% / 53.04% | Exact · 1.7M deals | Load → |
| JTs vs AKoJhTh vs AcKd | 41.18% / 58.82% | Exact · 1.7M deals | Load → |
| Set vs flush draw on the flopQcQd vs AhKh on Qh7h2c | 74.44% / 25.56% | Exact · 990 deals | Load → |
| Top pair vs open-ender, turnAsKd vs 9h8h on Kc7d6s2c | 81.82% / 18.18% | Exact · 44 deals | Load → |
| AA vs a 20% opening rangeAhAs vs [55+,A4s+,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T8s+,98s,A9o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo] | 84.29% / 15.71% | Monte Carlo · 6.0M trials | Load → |
| Three-way: AA vs KK vs QQAhAs vs KdKc vs QsQh | 66.51% / 18.88% / 14.62% | Exact · 1.4M deals | Load → |
A few things worth noticing. Aces against kings is the most lopsided pair-over-pair match-up there is, and even that leaves kings with one win in six. Ace-king against a small pair is a coin flip that slightly favours the pair, which is why "race" is the right word. The three-way number is the one people get wrong most often: AA against KK and QQ together is only a two-thirds favourite, because the aces have to beat both hands and the pairs' straights, flushes and sets add up.
Reading the results
Equity is your expected share of the pot and the number to compare against the price you are being offered. Win is how often the hand takes the pot outright, Tie how often it splits, Lose the rest; the small figure under each percentage is the raw count of boards or trials, the way twodimes and PokerStove showed it. The leading hand is marked on the left.
Hand distribution, the button above the table, breaks each player's final hand into categories: how often ace-king ends up with a pair, two pair, a flush, and how often each of those actually won. It is the quickest way to see why a draw is or is not worth the price: a flush draw that makes its flush 35% of the time but wins with it only 30% of the time is telling you something about the board.
When the number is exact and when it is not
The method line always says. Known hands on any street, up to around three players preflop, are enumerated exactly; the count of boards is shown so you can check it against the arithmetic. Spots involving ranges preflop, or many players preflop, are run as Monte Carlo for about a second and a half. The margin of error shown is for the leading hand at 95% confidence; with the default run it is usually under 0.2 of a point, and Run longer takes it under 0.05. Either way the ordering of the hands is never in doubt, and for a decision at the table the second decimal does not exist.
If you play the short-deck version of the game, the Short Deck odds calculator uses the 36-card deck and its ranking; Omaha players have the Omaha odds calculator. To turn an equity into a call-or-fold against a specific bet, the pot odds calculator does that arithmetic, and the ICM calculator adjusts it for tournament payouts.
Frequently asked questions
Both, and it tells you which. Any heads-up or three-way preflop match-up, and every flop, turn and river spot with known hands, is enumerated over every possible remaining board, so the number is exact to the last decimal. Range-versus-range preflop spots have too many combinations to enumerate in a browser, so those run Monte Carlo for about a second and a half and show the 95% margin of error next to the trial count. Press Run longer if you want it tighter.
Put it in square brackets in the Hands field, using the notation every range tool uses: [22+, A2s+, KTs+, ATo+, T9s-65s]. Or click Range editor, paint the 13x13 grid, and it writes the notation for you. A range can play against a specific hand, a random hand, or another range.
A random hand. AhAs xx gives you the classic aces-against-a-random-hand number (about 85%). You can also leave a hand partly known, such as Ah: the missing card is dealt at random each trial.
Because suits matter a little. Two players sharing suits block each other's flushes, so AhAs vs KhKs is 82.6% while AhAd vs KsKc is closer to 81.3%. The often-quoted 81.9% is the average over all suit combinations.
Win is the share of boards where the hand wins outright. Tie is the share where it splits. Equity is the share of the pot you expect to collect: win plus your fraction of each tie, which is why equity is the number to compare against pot odds.
No. The whole engine runs in your browser in a background thread. Nothing is uploaded, there is no sign-up, and it works offline once the page has loaded.
