The hand is all but won. All undercards have been flipped and we're down to one (exposed) 3-card flop. And yet the hand can't be brot home! Lets take a closer look.

The first thing we notice is that the top card 9 of the flop is unplayable. It needs a red ten to play on; the 10 is already in mid-strip on the KingRow while the 10 rests under our 9, neatly inaccessible!

Of course, if we had been able to play the holecard (the 5) earlier, we might have avoided this predicament. Note that one of the trapped cards is of the same suit as the top card but of lessor value while the other is of opposite color.

Most of the time, there is nothing that can be done to avoid this. However, one should be alert to the possability of leaving a "dead holecard" whenever possible.