Poker Odds: KK vs AK
Pocket kings are about a 2-to-1 favorite over ace-king but a big dog to aces. Here are the exact preflop equities, verified card by card.
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You open K♠ K♥, get three-bet, and shove. Villain snap-calls and tables A♣ K♦. Good news: you’re roughly a 70/30 favorite and about to win the pot two times out of three. Same shove, but villain flips A♣ A♦ instead, and the picture inverts brutally — now you’re an 81/19 underdog, drawing mostly to a lone king. Those two hands are the whole drama of pocket kings, and three numbers settle it: ~70% vs offsuit AK, ~66% vs suited AK, ~19% vs AA.
The headline equities
Every figure below comes from an exhaustive run of all 1,712,304 possible boards, cross-checked against a Monte Carlo sim:
| Matchup | KK equity | Opponent |
|---|---|---|
| KK vs AKo (offsuit) | 70.0% | 30.0% |
| KK vs AKs (suited) | 65.9% | 34.1% |
| KK vs AA | 18.7% | 81.3% |
Against ace-king you win about two hands in three; against aces, fewer than one in five. The distance between those outcomes is exactly why kings feel so swingy.
Why kings run over ace-king
Ace-king is a strong hand, but preflop it’s unpaired — against a made pair it has to improve to win most of the time. Count what AK is actually chasing when it runs into kings:
- Pair an ace: three aces remain in the deck (AK holds one of the four).
- Pair a king: nearly dead. KK holds two kings and AK holds one, so a single king is left — and catching it makes trips for the kings, not for AK.
- Runner-runner straights, flushes, and two pair fill the rest.
So AK is effectively drawing to three aces plus scraps of backdoor help, which pins it near 30–34%. Kings are already a made pair and only lose when ace-king manages to get there.
The suited premium is all flushes
Suited ace-king does better than offsuit for one reason: flush outs. A♠ K♠ can complete a spade flush that A♠ K♥ never can, and those extra runner-runner flush run-outs add about four points of equity to AK. Nothing about the aces or straights changes between the two versions — that four-point flush bump is the entire difference between 66% and 70%.
Why aces flip the script
Against A♣ A♦, kings become the second-best overpair before a card is even dealt — beaten by rank from the start. KK wins about 19% of the time, and almost all of it comes from making a set.
The set math: holding a pocket pair, you flop a set (or better) about 11.8% of the time — roughly one flop in 8.5, since you’re hoping one of your two remaining kings lands among the three flop cards. Add the rare straight and flush run-outs and kings scrape together their ~19%. Even after hitting a king, you still have to dodge villain improving right back over you.
The range problem is the real problem
The trap is treating a preflop shove as if it’s always aces. It almost never is. Aces are only 6 combinations out of everything a raiser can hold. Meanwhile ace-king is 16 combos (4 suited + 12 offsuit), and a typical all-in range also folds in QQ, sometimes AQ — hands kings dominate.
Weight it out and your equity against a realistic “AA, KK, AKs, AKo” style shoving range still clears the break-even bar for most pot sizes, because the 16 combos of AK you’re crushing swamp the 6 combos of AA you fear. That’s why strong players get kings in against unknown opponents almost every time. The combinatorics page walks through counting those combos, and preflop all-in odds turns them into an actual call-or-fold line.
From equity to a decision
Knowing KK is 70% against AK only pays off when you convert it to money. All-in for a pot where you’ve put in half, you need your equity to beat the price you’re paying:
- Vs AK (70%): you’re a massive favorite — an easy get-it-in.
- Vs AA (19%): you’d need enormous pot odds to continue, which basically never exist preflop. The one folding spot, if any.
- Vs an unknown range: blend them. Since AA is 6 combos and AK is 16, the blended number lands you firmly on the “get it in” side.
| Villain holding | KK win % | Rule of thumb |
|---|---|---|
| Any lower pair (QQ–22) | ~80%+ | Big favorite, get it in |
| AKo | ~70% | 2-to-1 favorite |
| AKs | ~66% | Still a clear favorite |
| AA | ~19% | Big dog — the only fold |
Kings beat the entire deck except one holding. Lock in the three anchors — 70% vs AKo, 66% vs AKs, 19% vs AA — and every KK decision collapses into a single read: how much of villain’s range is really aces? Almost always, not enough to fold. Build the surrounding skills through equity, combinatorics, and the poker odds & math hub, then take them to the Texas Hold’em tables.
Frequently asked
What are the odds of KK vs AK preflop?
Pocket kings are roughly a 70/30 favorite over offsuit ace-king and about 66/34 over suited ace-king. In both cases KK wins about two times out of three, close to a 2-to-1 favorite.
What are the odds of KK vs AA?
Pocket kings are a big underdog to pocket aces, winning only about 19% of the time — roughly a 4.3-to-1 dog. The aces dominate because they outrank the king's overpair from the start.
Why does KK do better against offsuit AK than suited AK?
Suited ace-king picks up extra runner-runner flush outs that the offsuit version can't make, adding about four points of equity to AK — the whole gap between the ~66% and ~70% figures.
How often does KK flop a set against aces?
About 11.8% of the time, or roughly one flop in 8.5. Hitting a set is where most of KK's ~19% against aces comes from, with rare straights and flushes filling in the rest.
Should you fold KK preflop?
Almost never. KK beats every hand except AA, and aces are only 6 of the many combos a raiser can hold. Against a realistic shoving range that also contains AK and lower pairs, kings keep enough equity to get the money in.