Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow has been one of the most recent high-profile examples of getting burnt by an over-egged Ace-rag. With only three runners left in the WSOP 2006’s curtain-raising event, the Tournament of Champions, last year’s champ Matusow pushes hard only to fall flat on his face. The blinds are at a fierce $5,000-$10,000 when Daniel Negreanu raises to $25,000 from the button.

Mike Sexton calls Kid Poker, which builds the pot’s value to just over $60,000. The Mouth, defending his big blind to the hilt, shoves his entire stack – a not inconsiderable $170,000 of chips – into the middle of the table with A -4 .

Negreanu folds but Sexton, who had dangerously flat-called, turns over pocket Sevens (7 -7 ) making the WPT commentator more than a 2/1 favourite. No Ace appears and Matusow walks away in third with $250,000, and misses out on reclaiming his Tournament of Champions crown.

The play

As the short-stack Matusow would have made the move because he felt that with $170,000 he still had just enough fold equity to push all-in with Ace-high. For either Negreanu or Sexton to call would cost them almost $150,000 more, and if they did, and Matusow won the hand, it would bring him back into contention.

Negreanu’s raise could have been a standard button raise, which his subsequent fold seems to back up. This left Sexton needing to call $145,000 to win around $370,000, which gave him great odds to call with a pocket pair and take the chance to knock Matusow out. Only an over-pair would have put Sexton behind in a showdown. Any other cards held by Matusow would make Sexton favourite to face Negreanu heads-up for the $1m first prize.