Hands that can change your poker life forever....

This isn't a post regarding a strategical question, it's more of a discussion about hands that have changed the outcome of your poker career.


I don't know if anyone has encountered this; but i have. I can recall a stint this summer where i was running horrible.
Anyways, things changed dramatically with one hand. 5-10 NL game and I get it all in pre-flop with KK against AA, and I flop a set and win an enormous pot. When my opponent flipped up aces, it just punctuated what I had dealt with in the previous two months, second best hands, concsistently. I had stretched my bankroll too thin, and had sat with too much than I should have in this particular game (in hindsight). Anyways, this one pot had a huge impact on my poker career. Not to mention the fact that it gave a much needed cushion to my bankroll. If I hadn't won this pot, I wouldnt have been funded to play in the same game the next day, which turned out to be one of my best sessions ever, which added up to a weekend that wiped out two months of bad beats and second best hands. I wonder where I would be playing limit wise if I didnt win that hand? It started a snowball effect, so to speak.

That hand is miniscule compared to others that I've seen at the WSOP.

I wonder if anyone would remember Greg Raymer if he didnt turn the nut flush against Mike Matusow in the '04 WSOP?

Or when David Williams made a runner runner flush to beat the set of jacks of Mike McClaine.....

Same thing applies to many players, and I found it interesting and almost confounding how one hand can have such a huge impact on your poker career. One thing leads to another, and this certainly applies in poker. Sometimes I think that poker and life run parallel courses in the events that transpire, and the similarities that our game displays as far as people are concerned.

Can anyone relate to what I'm saying? Has anyone here been on the brink and won a hand that swung things in the entire other direction?