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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Charles Curtis

The worst hand of poker improbably took down pocket aces in a super-lucky World Series of Poker moment

The 2021 World Series of Poker is currently taking place in Las Vegas, and here’s a hand you need to see to show how lucky one player was.

As you might know, the best hand in Hold ‘Em — this was the final table at the $3,000 No Limit Hold ‘Em tourney — is pocket aces. The worst? A 2-7.

Here, we have Brandon Caputo, who has a pair of aces with 1.8 million in chips, which at this point at the final table wasn’t much. But he wanted to get as much value for his aces as possible, so he called the big blind.

Harvey Mathews (over nine million in chips) had the 2-7, except — and this is important — they were suited diamonds. He was the big blind, so he simply checked.

The flop was 10-2-3, with the 3 of diamonds showing up. Caputo bet 160,000 and Mathews called with his pair of 2s.

The turn? The 8 of diamonds. Uh-oh. The flush draw was in play. But Caputo bet 300,000 and Mathews thought about it for a while before going all in, which Caputo called.

Guess what came out on the river? Yep. A diamond, specifically the queen. Mathews hit his diamond flush and eliminated Caputo with what started out as the worst hand against the best hand.

Watch this whole thing unfold:

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