I was watching Phil Ivy on Poker After Dark...

[questions]

Well all of those pre-flop hands are drawing hands (I assume the last hand you watched was also a low pocket pair? If it had been aces or kings, you would have said so, probably.) so he got top pair-medium kicker on the first one. so what - not usually good enough to win a hand with if your opponent decides to take it to the river. On the second one, Farha was ahead, but Ivey made a good call, since 1) he had a set and 2) boards pair up often making the chance of getting a full house good. On the third hand, flopping a full house doesn't happen that much, but think about how often that happens, you bet and everybody folds - how useful is that full house then?

What you don't tell us, or what the editors decided to cut because it was boring TV, are the 27 hands (whatever number) which followed, which Ivey folded pre-flop.