A young and inexperienced player had posted a hand for analysis at a forum. The betting went like this (the actual amounts are not important to the discussion). It was a multi way limped pot and a typical loose passive small stakes no limit hold em game. On the flop of 10c-10d-5c everyone checked to him and he bet slightly less than the size of the pot from late position with trip 10's and a jack kicker. After the button called, the small blind (sb) then check raised about the size of the pot. The big blind (bb) smooth called the raise. The young player called the raise and the button folded.

On the turn (Ad), the sb bet out a rather small amount relative to the pot size. Once again the bb smooth called the bet. Now the young man decided to make a fairly large raise since the turn bet seemed really weak to him.

He was thinking he could either win this pot right now or win a much bigger pot. He believed he had the best hand given how weak the turn bet was. Besides, he didn't want to give anyone a cheap draw to a flush or any other drawing hand (like a weak Ace). After he raised about 4 times the initial turn bet though, the sb reraised all in (just slightly more than the young man's turn raise). After a bet, call, raise, and reraise all in by the sb, the bb reraised all in too. This reraise easily covered the young man's remaining stack... Anyone here smell a rat? I sure do!

The young man tried to defend his subsequent all in call stating that he had already committed a lot of money into the pot. The fact is that his final call represented the last 60% of his stack. This is rationalization at it's finest! He was pretty sure someone else probably had a 10 before he made the call but because his opponents were in the blinds he felt the person who held the case ten probably didn't have a big kicker. That is an assumption based on the myth that blind hands are random since they are forced to play the hand they are dealt and do not put their money in voluntarily. His assumption went even further though as the young man felt certain that one of the players must have a flush draw or at best held Aces up and couldn't have a full house since they were in the blinds. He also stated that the board didn't look too scary since he knew where one of the 10's was and there were no straights or flushes possible. He knew they both could not have a 10 since there are only four tens in the deck and he held one of them. If his analysis was indeed correct he felt he might still be ahead in this confrontation and even if he wasn't he still had some outs. Was this another rationalization or was this denial on his behalf?

It is interesting how we can sometimes deny or rationalize a mistake when discussing a hand.

This situation wasn't a blatant mistake yet, there were plenty of signs that would steer one to a different conclusion as to what was really going on here. Be careful of defense mechanisms because, just like mistakes, if you fail to recognize them then you are never going to improve to your full potential. That would indeed be a real bad beat for a young man who has potential. Luckily for him, he didn't fall very deep into the trap of denial and rationalization, otherwise he would never had posted this hand in the first place. Next time I will discuss several key concepts in poker and clarify some misconceptions/ assumptions.