And this is why I love the game! Texas Hold'em poker!

Final table. 5 Players still in the game. Dealer deals and you get KK. You raise preflop, and 3 players call your raise, on folds out. The flop comes KK3!!! This is monster. Dreams are made of this, if the table plays into this hand. You feel your blood pressure rise, the adrenaline rush burn a hole right through your brain! You are convinced that you are now sweating pure blood, and that every player on the table can see you have hit gold!!!!

You check (See my comments on this play further down). Next player ships his stack?!? WTF? All in on the flop? Next player ships, as does player number 4!?!?! There is now a mountain of chips on the table! You have the NUTS (That's poker speak for unbeatable hand) and it's you to call. No brainer. All in - let's see what you puppies called and shipped with!!?!?!?!?!?

You Have KK - next player AA (sorry bud, you limp with that you going to get fucked over 4 out of 5 times!!), next player has QQ, well, with KK on the deck, and an all in  call before you, you should have folded, and finally, player 4 has 33! Shit, he flops a full house, 3's over K's, there is no way he's ever going to fold, so he is doomed in this hand anyway.

So, KK holds up, and 3 players go out of the game. You, with the massive pile of chips are left playing head up against the other player, who has less than 10% of your chips stack. he is oh, so fucked. All in a few hands and it's game over!


This was a real play. GMan was the lucky player pulling KK, and he was playing a small freezout tournament.

OK, so apart from the awesome hand, flop, and win, what else is there?

So, first rule of poker is to read the other player. Learn how they play 99% of the time, and you can get a "read" on them. This should guide the way you play them, or play into them.

OK, so the AA holder should have either re-raised him pre-flop, or shipped pre-flop. You cannot limp / flat call with AA, (depending on your position at the table in relation to the Dealer chip, but that's a different calculation).
Then, pre-flop GMan raised. Post flop he checked..... First mistake and indicator for the other players. 99% of the time if GMan raises pre-flop, no matter what cards come on the flop, he will at the very least place a minimum bet, and get a feel of what the other players would have, based on their reaction, call or fold, or raise. Almost every time. But he checked. This would have told me he had hit, at the worst, a set (3 of a kind), and I would have checked back at him, or min raised to see if he came at me or not. No matter what you have in your hands, on that flop, you probably behind! Checking into him gives me at least one more card to see at no cost.
So, AA thought he had the 2 x top pair.
QQ should have folded against the all in by AA, as he must have known he was now behind.
33 was dead in the water. He flops a full house, he's never going to get out of this hand. Having said that, if he had been watching the other players, he might have folded 33 pre-flop on the basis that there was a pre-flop raise, and 33 are such a low pair, anyone with an Ace / picture card are probably going to be beating him.

Salagatle!