1,326 combinations, 169 hands
Why suits collapse before the flop and what that does to the matrix.
5 minute read
Before the flop, the only thing suits tell you is whether your two cards match. So the 1,326 concrete combinations fold into 169 kinds of hand: 13 pairs, 78 suited hands, 78 offsuit hands. The 13 × 13 matrix is a map of those 169.
Click any hand. Suited above the diagonal, offsuit below, pairs on it.
Shading: brighter green is higher equity. Monte Carlo simulation, seeded xoshiro128**, 500,000 trials per hand, seed 20260901.
Suited
Jack-Ten suited
Equity against random hands
Multi-way, a hand’s share of the pot falls even when it is the favourite: a fair share against 8 opponents is 11.1%.
Head-to-head, exact
Every one of the 1,712,304 possible boards, enumerated for each matchup.
- vs Pocket aces…
- vs Pocket queens…
- vs Ace-king offsuit…
- vs Pocket sevens…
Probability of a class
combinations ÷ 1,326
Pocket aces: 6 ÷ 1,326 = 0.45%. Ace-king: 16 ÷ 1,326 = 1.21%.
Because the matrix has equal-sized cells, it exaggerates suited hands: a suited cell holds 4 combinations, an offsuit cell 12. When someone says "top 10% of hands", they mean 10% of the 1,326 combinations, not 17 cells.
Quick check
What fraction of all starting hands are suited?
Show answer
312 ÷ 1,326 = 23.5% — 12 of the 51 other cards match your first card's suit.