AK vs AQ: Who Wins? Exact Odds
AK dominates AQ: about 73.6% to 26.4% across all suit combinations, with an unusually high 4.6% chop rate. AQ's ace is dead weight — when both players pair their ace, the king kicker beats the queen — so AQ mostly needs a queen without a king.
Win, tie, loss
Share of all possible runouts across every suit combination (192 combo pairs). Equity adds half the ties to each side: AK 73.6%, AQ 26.4%.
Equity by suit configuration
AKo vs AQo74.4% / 25.6%
| Suit configuration | Combos | AKo equity | AQo equity |
|---|---|---|---|
A♠K♥ vs A♦Q♠ Q♠ shares the ace's suit | 24 | 74.75% | 25.25% |
A♠K♥ vs A♦Q♥ Q♥ shares the king's suit | 24 | 74.69% | 25.31% |
A♠K♥ vs A♦Q♣ no shared suits — every backdoor flush is live | 24 | 74.02% | 25.98% |
A♠K♥ vs A♥Q♦ A♥ shares the king's suit | 24 | 73.96% | 26.04% |
A♠K♥ vs A♥Q♠ A♥ shares the king's suit; Q♠ shares the ace's suit | 12 | 74.70% | 25.30% |
| All AKo vs AQo combos | 108 | 74.39% | 25.61% |
AKo vs AQs70.1% / 29.9%
| Suit configuration | Combos | AKo equity | AQs equity |
|---|---|---|---|
A♠K♥ vs A♦Q♦ no AQ flush-suit card in the other hand — the flush draw is fully live | 24 | 69.73% | 30.27% |
A♠K♥ vs A♥Q♥ K♥ blocks one card of AQ's flush suit | 12 | 70.90% | 29.10% |
| All AKo vs AQs combos | 36 | 70.12% | 29.88% |
AKs vs AQo75.5% / 24.6%
| Suit configuration | Combos | AKs equity | AQo equity |
|---|---|---|---|
A♠K♠ vs A♥Q♦ no AK flush-suit card in the other hand — the flush draw is fully live | 24 | 75.56% | 24.44% |
A♠K♠ vs A♥Q♠ Q♠ blocks one card of AK's flush suit | 12 | 75.22% | 24.78% |
| All AKs vs AQo combos | 36 | 75.45% | 24.55% |
AKs vs AQs71.3% / 28.7%
| Suit configuration | Combos | AKs equity | AQs equity |
|---|---|---|---|
A♠K♠ vs A♥Q♥ each hand is suited in its own suit — both flush draws fully live | 12 | 71.28% | 28.72% |
| All AKs vs AQs combos | 12 | 71.28% | 28.72% |
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 the queen kicker is dead
Both hands share an ace, so the most common decisive runout — one ace, nothing else interesting — goes to the better kicker every time. That single fact moves the matchup from the 43.2%-ish equity AK gets in a race to 26.4% for AQ. The queen is AQ's only clean out (28.6% to appear), and some queen boards still lose to a king or a straight. This is the matchup behind the old advice that "any ace" is a leak: dominated aces don't lose often, they lose big.
- A queen reaches the board 28.6% of the time — close to AQ's total equity of 26.4%, and not every queen board is safe, because a king can arrive with it.
- Chops are unusually common: 4.6% of runouts. When the board plays — a straight, or two pair with a bigger kicker than both hands — the shared ace cancels the kicker battle entirely.
- Suits barely dent the domination: even the best layout for AQ (AQs vs AKo) only reaches 29.9%. Rank domination is worth far more than suited-ness here.
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 AK vs AQ yourself in the odds calculator and watch the Monte Carlo estimate converge on these numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Who wins AK vs AQ all-in preflop?+
AK: 73.6% vs 26.4% overall, with 4.6% ties. AK wins 71.3% of boards outright; AQ only 24.1%.
How bad is AQ against AK?+
AQ wins about 1 in 3.8 — better than KK-vs-AA odds, but the money goes in behind a dead kicker. AQ's escape hatch is a queen-high board; a queen appears 28.6% of the time.
How often do AK and AQ split the pot?+
4.6% — one of the highest chop rates of any common matchup, because the shared ace means the board frequently plays for both hands.