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Short deck (6+) equity calculator
Short deck equity on 36 cards with Triton scoring, exact from the flop.
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Short Deck (6+ Hold'em) is Texas Hold'em dealt from a 36-card deck, every 2 through 5 removed, and scored under Triton rules: a flush beats a full house, and A-9-8-7-6 is the lowest straight (the ace still plays high in A-K-Q-J-T). Only 1,404 distinct five-card hand ranks exist, against 7,462 with a full deck, and the game runs closer and hits harder: on the flop you see 5 of 36 cards, leaving 31 unknown, so a single out is worth about 3.2% per card instead of the full-deck 2.1%. This calculator computes short deck equity for two to six hands with the 36-card bank, optional board and dead cards. Flop, turn and river enumerate every remaining runout for an exact answer; preflop enumerates when few enough boards remain and otherwise runs Monte Carlo until every hand converges inside a ±0.3% target.
Short Deck Equity Calculator FAQ
How it works
Pick cards for two to six short deck hands and watch equity update live under Triton rules. Results are exact on the flop, turn and river; preflop is exact when few enough runouts remain, Monte Carlo to a ±0.3% target otherwise. Add a board, mark dead cards, lock hands you want to keep, and share any spot with a link.
Does a flush really beat a full house?
Yes, and it should. With nine cards per suit there are only 480 possible flushes in a 36-card deck against 1,728 full houses, so the rarer hand outranks the more common one. A full 52-card deck is the reverse (5,108 flushes, 3,744 full houses), which is why the ladder flips. This calculator scores flush over full house and straights over trips - the Triton ladder. Some cash games rank trips above straights; that variant is not modeled here.
Is A-9-8-7-6 really a straight?
Yes. The 6 connects to the ace exactly as the 2 does in a full deck, so A-9-8-7-6 is the short deck wheel and the lowest straight; A-K-Q-J-T is still the best. Only six distinct straights exist (a full deck has ten), but they arrive far more often - nine ranks packed into every deal means connected cards are never far apart.
How different are short deck equities from regular hold'em?
Closer almost everywhere, and sometimes flipped outright. The famous one: AK suited against QQ is a dog with 52 cards and becomes a small favorite under Triton rules - load AhKh vs QsQd and watch it. Pocket pairs also arrive more often (8.6% of deals vs 5.9% full-deck: 3 of the 35 unseen cards pair your first card), so set mining and set-over-set are both live.
How many outs is my flush draw worth?
Recount everything from 36. After the flop 31 cards are unseen, so one out is worth about 3.2% per card, not the 2.1% full-deck players memorize. But a flush draw is only 5 outs here - nine cards per suit, four already visible to you - while an open-ender still has 8. Net effect: straight draws gain value, flush draws lose it, and made flushes are gold because so few remain. The enumeration here handles all the out-overlap exactly.
Are the results exact or simulated?
Flop, turn and river: always exact, every runout enumerated. Preflop runs Monte Carlo until every hand's 95% interval is inside ±0.3%: this page enumerates only when 30,000 boards or fewer remain, and even a six-way pot on the 36-card deck leaves more than that until two cards are dead. The status line under the equity bar reports which mode ran.
Why is there no percentile readout in short deck?
The P chip under each hand in our other variants ranks the hand against the full starting-hand population. We have not built the short deck table yet, so the readout is omitted rather than approximated. Equities, exact enumeration and the 36-card dead-card handling are all fully supported.
What is the fastest way to set up spots?
Keyboard. R deals random hands (lock one first to keep it), C clears, arrow keys move the selected slot, Del clears it, and ? shows the full shortcut map. S jumps to short deck from any variant, 2/4/5/6 the others. Copy share link produces a short URL that reproduces the exact spot.
Range vs range under Triton rules: the range equity calculator covers 6+ too