Phil Gorden started a column over at ESPN. He included in his latest entry, a table detailing the chances of Pocket Aces against Pocket Kings in subsequent hands. This'll be old hat to some of you, but I found it interesting so I'm posting.

Quick note: This is when you are holding pocket aces and you're opponent has pocket kings. It basically details the cumulative chance (like in a tournament) that you will survive an all-in holding pocket aces.

Mr. Gordon says this, "Over the course of 7 days of play, 10 hours of play a day, you face this situation 14 times. 14 times you'll have to "not get unlucky" in order to win the tournament. What are the chances?"


AA vs. KK
Chance of All In Survival

1 81.26%

2 66.02%

3 53.65%

4 43.59%

5 35.42%

6 28.78%

7 23.39%

8 19.00%

9 15.44%

10 12.55%

11 10.19%

12 8.28%

13 6.73%

14 5.47%


He goes on to say, "From this little table, you can see that you only have slightly better than a 50% chance to survive the first three of these confrontations! 46.35% of the time, you will have taken a bad beat and be joining me and the rest of the poor saps at the Palms Hotel's Ghost Bar, where we will seriously consider throwing ourselves off the 55th floor."



Here's the link in case anyone wants to read the entire article. Not the greatest poker article, but interesting.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=gordon_phil&id=2015263