How your Dream AA turned into a $839,000 Nightmare by Brutal Flop

 

The Players:

• Nat Punsri: A♠ A♣ (Pocket Aces)

• Dan Cates: 8♣ 8♠ (Pocket Eights)

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🃏 Community Cards:

• Flop: 8♥ 6♣ 8♦

• Turn: A♦

• (River not shown yet, but doesn't matter at this point)

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🧠 Hand Analysis:

🔹 Pre-Flop:

• Punsri (A♠ A♣) has the best starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em — pocket Aces.

• Cates (8♣ 8♠) has a strong but clearly inferior hand to Aces pre-flop.

🔹 Flop: 8♥ 6♣ 8♦

• Cates flops quads (four of a kind, Eights) — an extremely rare and dominant hand.

• Punsri just has an overpair (Aces), which still looks strong from his perspective.

At this point:

• Cates: Four 8s (Quad Eights)

• Punsri: Pair of Aces

Punsri is drawing nearly dead — only running Aces (Ace on both the Turn and River) would save him with quad Aces.

🔹 Turn: A♦

Now it gets brutal:

• Cates: Still has quads (8888)

• Punsri: Now has Aces full of Eights (Full house — AAA88)

From Punsri’s perspective, this turn card is perfect. He just hit top full house (AAA88), which crushes most hands… except quads.

🎬 At This Point:

• Best 5-card hand for Cates: 8♥ 8♦ 8♣ 8♠ A♦ (Quad Eights with Ace kicker)

• Best 5-card hand for Punsri: A♠ A♣ A♦ 8♥ 8♦ (Aces full of Eights)

Quad Eights beats Aces full of Eights.

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💰 Pot: $839,000

Punsri likely felt very confident and may have gone all-in or called a big bet — which is completely reasonable with his hand. But he got "coolered" — a poker term for a situation where a very strong hand loses to an even stronger one, and there's little to no escape.

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🔚 Conclusion:

• Punsri had the second nuts (2nd-best possible hand given the board).

• Cates had the stone-cold nuts (best hand possible).

• Punsri’s loss was unavoidable — it’s one of those tragic, unlucky poker moments.

Full video: