Pair vs pair

AA vs QQ: Who Wins? Exact Odds

81.5%AA equity vs 18.4% for QQ

AA wins about 81.5% of the time (QQ 18.5%, ties 0.4%) — roughly a 4.4-to-1 favorite. That number is exact: every suit combination and all 1,712,304 possible boards per configuration were enumerated.

Win, tie, loss

AA wins 81.3%tie 0.4%QQ wins 18.2%

Share of all possible runouts across every suit combination (36 combo pairs). Equity adds half the ties to each side: AA 81.5%, QQ 18.4%.

Equity by suit configuration

AA vs QQ81.5% / 18.4%

Suit configurationCombosAA equityQQ equity
A♠A♥ vs Q♠Q♦
one shared suit — one of QQ's flush suits only makes flushes AA beats
2481.55%18.45%
A♠A♥ vs Q♠Q♥
both suits shared — every flush QQ makes, AA makes bigger
682.23%17.77%
A♠A♥ vs Q♦Q♣
no shared suits — QQ has two live flush suits
680.86%19.14%
All AA vs QQ combos3681.55%18.45%

Each row is a suit-isomorphism class: relabeling the four suits doesn't change equity, so every combo in a row has the identical, exactly-enumerated number. “Combos” counts the hand-vs-hand combinations the row represents.

Why QQ is in so much trouble

Both players hold a made pair, but only one of them is winning unimproved — and pocket pairs rarely improve. QQ has exactly two set cards left in the deck, seen on the board just 19.9% of the time, and even a queen doesn't guarantee the pot on straight- or flush-heavy runouts. Meanwhile AA needs nothing: it can check-snooze to the river and still win most showdowns. That asymmetry is the whole story of pair-over-pair "coolers".

  • QQ's main lifeline is one of the two remaining queens, and at least one lands on the board only 19.9% of the time. The rest of its 18.5% comes from straights, flushes and runout quirks.
  • Suits shift the matchup by 1.4 points: QQ does best with no shared suits (19.1% — two live flush suits) and worst when both suits are shared (17.8% — every flush it makes loses to a bigger one).
  • The rank of the underpair barely matters against aces: QQ wins 18.5% here, and KK does only slightly better at 18.1%.

How it was calculated

Exact enumeration, not simulation: for every suit configuration above, all 1,712,304 possible five-card boards were dealt and both hands scored with app/lib/poker-eval.js — the same 7-card evaluator behind /tools/odds-calculator. Ties split the pot, so equity is win% plus half the tie%. Computed 2026-07-27.

Don't take our word for it — run AA vs QQ yourself in the odds calculator and watch the Monte Carlo estimate converge on these numbers.

Frequently asked questions

How often does QQ beat AA?+

18.5% of the time — about 1 in 5.4. QQ wins 18.2% of boards outright and chops 0.4%.

Do suits matter in AA vs QQ?+

A little. With no shared suits QQ gets 19.1%; with both suits shared it falls to 17.8% because its flush outs are dead. The full breakdown is in the table above.

Is AA vs QQ really 80/20?+

Almost exactly. The precise all-suits figure is 81.5% vs 18.5% with 0.4% ties — "four to one" is a fair way to say it at the table.

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