3 Card Hold'em, Omaha & Texas Hold'em Equity Calculator

What is poker equity?

Poker equity is your share of the pot if the hand were played to showdown right now, repeated millions of times. If your hand wins 65% of the time against your opponent's hand on a given board, you have 65% equity in that pot. It's not a guess — it's a precise mathematical probability you can calculate.

Two important things equity is NOT:

• • Equity isn't a prediction — saying you have 65% equity doesn't mean you'll win this specific hand. It means across all possible card combinations, your hand wins 65 times out of 100.
• • Equity isn't the same as odds-to-call. Pot odds are about price (what you have to pay to stay in). Equity is about your hand strength. You compare them to decide whether a call is profitable. See our pot odds article.

How to use this calculator

1. 1. Pick a variant — Texas Hold'em (2 hole cards) or 3-Card Hold'em / Pineapple (3 hole cards). Toggle at the top of the calculator.
2. 2. Add hole cards for each player by clicking cells in the card grid. The active player highlights — click a different player's card to switch.
3. 3. Optionally add board cards — flop, turn, river. If you don't add any, the simulator runs all 5 community cards randomly.
4. 4. Click Calculate — the Monte Carlo engine runs 80,000 simulated hands in your browser using a Web Worker (UI never freezes). Results appear in 1-3 seconds.
5. 5. Read equity per player — exact percentage chance to win, plus tie/chop frequency.

How the Monte Carlo engine works

We use a 7-card bit-mask hand evaluator combined with Monte Carlo simulation. Each iteration:

1. 1. Take the cards you specified (hole + any board you locked in)
2. 2. Shuffle the remaining deck
3. 3. Deal random cards to fill the rest of the board
4. 4. Score each player's best 5-card hand from their 2-3 hole + 5 board
5. 5. Record win/tie

80,000 iterations gives results accurate to within ~0.3% of the true mathematical equity. That's well within decision-quality margins. Compare to PokerStove, Equilab, or PropokerTools — same math, just browser-based with no install.

Omaha (PLO) equity

Switching to Omaha (PLO) mode gives each player 4 hole cards and enforces the Omaha rule: you MUST use exactly 2 of your 4 hole cards combined with exactly 3 of the 5 board cardsin your final 5-card hand. You can't use 3 hole cards (no "playing the board" shortcut). Our evaluator enumerates all 60 candidate combinations (6 hole-pairs × 10 board-triples) per player and picks the best score.

PLO equities are tighter than Hold'em. Two reasons:

• → Premium hands run closer to coinflips. AAxx vs random in PLO is ~62-65% (vs 85% for AA in Hold'em). The 4 hole cards mean opponents have many more outs.
• → Coordinated hands win. Double-suited rundowns (e.g. 8♠9♠T♥J♥) are PLO monsters. They flop combo draws, straights, and flushes far more often than any Hold'em starting hand.

PLO is the second-most-popular poker variant after Hold'em. If you're branching out, expect to give up edge if you bring Hold'em intuition without adjusting. Starting hand selection in PLO is fundamentally different.

3-Card Hold'em / Pineapple equity

Switching the variant toggle to 3-Card Hold'em / Pineapplechanges how each player's hand is evaluated. Instead of 2 hole cards + 5 board, you now have 3 hole cards + 5 board. The evaluator picks the best 5-card hand from 8 cards total (3 hole + 5 board) — same as the "Lazy Pineapple" / "Tahoe" / "Open-Faced Pineapple" format on most poker training tools.

Why equities differ from regular Hold'em:

• → Pocket aces (AA) drop from ~85% to ~76% vs random — premium pairs lose dominance because more hands can outdraw them with a third card.
• → Suited connected cards (e.g. 9♠T♠J♠) gain massively — flush + straight + three-of-a-kind potential in one hand.
• → Flushes occur ~3x more often — 3 suited hole cards vs 2.

Read the full breakdown in our What is 3-Card Hold'em (Pineapple Poker)? guide — covers all variants (Classic, Crazy, Lazy, Tahoe, Open-Faced) and starting hand strategy.

Common all-in matchups (Texas Hold'em)

The classic preflop matchups. Numbers are equity for the first hand listed:

Memorize these — they come up constantly in tournament push/fold decisions and cash game all-ins. For deeper analysis on specific hands, see our 169-hand preflop strategy library with per-hand equity breakdowns.

Use this tool as a "Which Hand Wins" calculator

Beyond computing equity percentages, this calculator works as a definitive "which hand wins?"tool. The trick: enter BOTH players' complete hole cards AND a complete 5-card board. With no unknowns left, the calculator returns 100% / 0% — that's your declared winner.

When to use this:

• → Settling table disputes — "does my flush actually beat his straight?" Plug both hands + board, see the winner instantly.
• → Reviewing a hand history after the session — verify which hand actually won at showdown.
• → Edge cases — split pots, kicker tie-breakers, the Ace-low straight. The calculator handles all of them correctly per standard Hold'em rules.

Most "which hand wins" questions can be answered just by knowing the poker hand rankings and tie-breaker rules. But for ambiguous spots — two flushes with similar high cards, two pair with identical pairs but different kickers, the wheel straight — the calculator removes all doubt.

Common "which hand wins" resolutions:

• ✓ Flush vs straight: flush always wins (rarer hand category).
• ✓ Higher flush vs lower flush: highest card decides. K-high flush beats Q-high flush regardless of suit.
• ✓ Two pair vs two pair: higher of the two pairs wins. KK-77 beats QQ-JJ. If higher pairs tie, lower pair decides. If both tie, kicker decides.
• ✓ Same pair, different kickers: compare kickers in order. AA with K kicker beats AA with Q kicker.
• ✓ Both make straight on board: often a chop — both players play the board if neither has hole cards extending the straight further.

Using equity in real poker decisions

Equity by itself doesn't tell you what to do. You combine it with pot odds, position, opponent tendencies, and stack depth. Three frameworks:

1. The pot odds vs equity rule

Call if your equity ≥ pot odds. Pot odds are simply (bet to call) ÷ (final pot if you call). A $10 call into a $40 final pot = 25% pot odds — meaning you need at least 25% equity to break even. Use our pot odds calculator for quick math.

2. Implied odds for draws

When you have a flush draw or straight draw, your raw equity is ~35%. But when you HIT, you usually win extra bets on the turn or river. Add 5-10% effective equity for implied odds in deep-stacked spots.

3. Range vs range, not hand vs hand

You rarely know your opponent's exact hand. Calculate equity against their RANGE (the set of hands they could have). Our range vs range calculator handles this — you click ranges on a 13×13 grid and get equity vs range, not just hand vs hand.

Frequently asked questions