Unlucky flop

Okay,

Here's a brutal flop for pocket tens vs a10. Many people on the you tube comments suggest that Hudson played like a donkey. I certainly would be more sympathetic. Others would call this type of hand the cooler hand.

On the one hand, it's pretty hard to walk away form tens full of aces, especially vs a player like Sammy Farha. One could look at this hand many ways. Though Sammy Fahra won the hand, if Hudson was playing AQ or AJ, the end result would have been different.

Whether or not Hudson played like a donk or just got unlucky is subject to interpretation. If anything. he didn't seem to put much thought into what hand Sammy had. I've lost enough hands being on the wrong end of the full boat, that I may not want to lay this hand down, but I certainly wouldn't want to go all in on it.

At the turn, with Sammy Fahra raising 1200 chips, you pretty much have to put him on a very good hand. Let's look at the action...

Preflop:
Sammy raises 200 [A, 10]
Hudson re-raises to 450 [pocket ten]

[I would be nervous about playing a hand like pocket tens, the first hand of the worlds series of poker. Sammy called the re-raise which suggests that he probably has either a pocket pair or an ace with a decent kicker.]

Flop: AA10
Sammy checks the nuts
Hudson checks

[Sammy checks which was the necessary slow play. However, had Hudson been holding an ace with a better kicker, Sammy would've given him a chance to win the hand--probably a risk worth taking. Hudson, should have worried that Sammy might have been in the pot with an Ace with a decent kicker.]

Turn: AA10, Q

[Hudson bet 300 out of position. Sammy raised to 1200 (Pot was now 900+1200). At this point, you have to ask what hand Hudson thought Sammy had. It's hard to believe that Sammy would risk1200 chips to bluff a 900 chips pot the first hand in the WSOP main event. This is especially hard to believe since there is a pretty scary combination of cards on the board. As well, Sammy probably knows that it's pretty hard to bluff an amature player--which Hudson is and proved by pushing all in.

To me, my pocket tens wouldn't look very good, especially at the turn. Sammy may have had the pocket AA--I've seen quad aces on flop before online, A/10, AQ, pocket QQ all of which would beat pocket tens.

The lesson here is to pay attention to dangerous flops. Whenever the board pairs a single card, there is always a possibility that someone has a full house. As well, when you have the a full house, if you are on the wrong side of the boat (tens full of aces vs aces full of tens), you can get into a lot of trouble.

At the turn, I would certainly consider the possibility that Sammy had a full house given his large raise. I would know that if he did have a full-house that I was beat. It's certainly possible that Sammy had a str8 to ace and with KJ overbetting his hand. If that's what I thought, I would have simply called. When the jack hit on the river, I would feel very uncomfortable about my tens full of aces simply because players love to play hands like AJ/AQ/A10. About the only hand that I would think that I could now beat that would make anysense still being in this hand would be KJ or AK.