Understanding Texas Hold’em equity
A poker equity calculation compares the cards each player could finish with. It answers a specific question: if everyone in this setup reaches showdown, how often does each player win or share the pot?
This calculator uses standard 52-card Texas Hold’em for two to nine players. Each player makes the best five-card hand from their two hole cards and the five shared community cards. That hand can use both, one or neither of their hole cards.
Start with the cards you know
Select the known hole cards for each player and add any community cards already dealt. Leave unknown cards blank. You can compare a known hand against another hand, a random opponent or a selected range of possible hands.
Dead cards are known cards that cannot be dealt, such as exposed cards already removed from play. Add only cards you actually know. A card cannot appear twice across the players, board and dead cards; those selections change which possible outcomes remain.
Read win, tie and equity together
Win is the chance of finishing as the sole winner. Tie is the chance of sharing first place with at least one other player. Equity includes outright wins plus the player’s share of tied pots, so it is not simply win plus tie.
In a two-way tie, each player receives half a share for that outcome. In a three-way tie, each receives one third. The players’ equities therefore add up to 100%, apart from rounding. The hand-type breakdown shows how often each player finishes with each category, whether or not it wins; royal flushes are included under straight flush.
Compare hands with ranges
A range describes several possible starting hands instead of two exact cards. The 169 starting-hand classes group pairs, suited hands and offsuit hands. Before known cards are excluded, a pair has six combinations, a suited hand four and an offsuit hand twelve.
The calculator gives each available card combination in a selected range equal weight. Known cards remove blocked combinations. A range is an assumption you choose, not a prediction of what an opponent holds, and changing that assumption can change the result substantially.
Exact results and simulations
When all hole cards are known and few community cards remain, the calculator can count every possible completion. These results are marked Exact. Larger scenarios use Monte Carlo simulation to sample possible deals from the remaining cards.
Simulated percentages may vary between runs. More samples reduce sampling noise, but they do not correct an unrealistic opponent range. Read the method and number of evaluated deals beside the result before comparing small percentage differences.
What the result leaves out
The calculation assumes a single shared pot and that every listed player reaches showdown. It does not model folding, future bets, different stack sizes, side pots or rake. Equity alone therefore cannot tell you whether a call or raise is profitable.
Use the result to explore card probabilities and compare clearly defined scenarios. It does not predict the next deal or provide a guaranteed outcome.
Outs, equity and expected value
An out is a remaining card that would improve your hand. Equity is your share of the pot if the hand were run to showdown many times — the calculator’s win percentage plus half of the tie percentage, unless a different convention is stated on the result. Expected value is equity translated into money after you account for the price of a call or bet. Equity is not the same as expected value.
A standard flopped flush draw has 9 outs (13 suited cards minus the 4 already seen). After the flop, 47 cards remain. The chance of hitting on the turn is 9 / 47 ≈ 19.15%. The chance of hitting by the river, without knowing the turn, is 1 − (38 / 47) × (37 / 46) = 1 − 1,406 / 2,162 ≈ 34.97%. These figures assume the remaining nines are live and that a pairing card or redraw is not being counted. The calculator can give a more precise equity when both hole-card ranges are known.