JJ vs KQ offsuit: the numbers
| JJ | KQ offsuit | |
|---|---|---|
| Wins | 56.72% | 42.95% |
| Ties | 0.33% | 0.33% |
| Equity | 56.88% | 43.12% |
Exact figures from all 1,712,304 boards for J♠ J♥ vs K♦ Q♣. JJ is roughly a 1.3-to-1 favorite.
Why the odds look like this: a coin flip
This is the classic poker "coin flip": a pocket pair against two higher cards. The pair is slightly ahead because KQ offsuit has to hit to win, but KQ offsuit has six outs to pair one of its cards plus straight and flush draws. When KQ offsuit wins, it is most often with one pair (40% of its wins) or two pair (39% of its wins).
How to play JJ vs KQ offsuit
Coin flips are why tournament survival is hard: you need to win several in a row to go deep. In cash games, flipping for a full stack is fine when the pot odds or fold equity are on your side.
Try other hands in the free poker odds calculator, or see every starting hand in the starting hands chart.
Related matchups
Use these numbers at the table
Preflop equity tells you how often a hand wins if all the money goes in before the flop. To decide whether a call is profitable, compare your equity with the pot odds you are getting: use the pot odds calculator. In tournaments, short stacks decide with shove-or-fold ranges, so see the push/fold chart. To test any other hands or a specific board, use the poker odds calculator.
Do suits matter?
Yes, a little. Suited hands make flushes more often, and when two hands share a suit they block each other's flushes. That is why the same two hands can differ by one or two percentage points depending on suits. The figures above are exact for the example cards shown.
How we calculated these odds
We dealt out every possible five-card board (1,712,304 of them) for the example hands and counted wins, losses and ties. There is no sampling error: the numbers are exact for those cards.