Awe-Inspiring Poker Hand Pits Aces vs. Kings vs. Queens

Here is an amazing hand of poker from last year's broadcast of the Party Poker European Open III.

With blinds of $1K and $2k, Dennis O'Mahoney opens the action at $6K to go, holding pocket kings. Darren Hickman has pocket queens and raises $20K.. Achilleas Kallakis goes into a huddle, with pocket aces, eventually deciding to raise all-in with his stack of $66K. Two players acting afterwards fold pocket sevens and pocket fives! Now it's O'Mahoney's turn to put on his thinking cap. Eventually he folds. Hickman calls Kallakis' all-in bet, and the two see a rainbow board of 2-3-K. The turn is a 4, and the river a Q, and Hickman's rivered set of queens crack Kallakis' pocket aces. If O'Mahoney had stayed in the hand he would have won a huge pot, but he had made a good preflop fold.

Just how incredible is this hand? When you think of it, not very. The odds against being dealt pocket aces are 220:1 against. At a six handed table, you expect to see someone dealt aces slightly less often than once in every thirty-seven hands on average. The numbers are the same for kings and queens, so if you neglect card depletion effects, the probability of three players having AA, KK, and QQ are going to be somewhat less than 1/37 cubed, or about one deal in fifty thousand. (At a ten-handed table, it is more like one deal in 10,800).

Now remember that poker has been televised for some years now, and in preparing the broadcast, the producers pick out the interesting hands. AA vs. KK. vs. QQ guaranteed to be interesting, even if — perhaps especially if — one or both of the players holding KK and QQ make good laydowns before the flop. Have there been fifty thousand deals of hold'em hands dealt at tables with card-peeking cameras since the advent of televised poker? I don't know, but I would guess that the actual number is somewhere in that order of magnitude. So it isn't surprising that sometime in the recent history of televised poker this confrontation between AA, KK, and QQ took place. And it's no surprise at all that a poker buff would put it up on YouTube. If you wait long enough in poker, everything is going to happen.

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