Several issues ago I presented a hand analysis in which a young man held trip 10's with a board of 10-10-5-A (he held J-10). The opponents he was up against had started in the blind positions. He had over utilized a concept about blind hands being random and generally weaker than average despite that the flop and turn action was fairly strong with a check raise on the flop followed by a weak bet on the turn, a smooth call by the big blind, a raise by the young man, and a reraise all in by the player in the small blind. The big blind was just calling the whole time up to this point but then he moved all in after the first all in. The young man rationalized that he had already put in a fair amount of his stack and felt he also held outs even if he was behind. My instincts told me that the small blind held trip 10's and that the big blind had slow played a full house. If this was the correct read then the young man held 3 outs to tie with the small blind (three Aces) and three cards that could win it for him (3 jacks). His pot odds were horrendous given that his last call was 60% of his entire stack. He was a much bigger underdog than he realized.

There are several concepts in play that this young man did not utilize in his analysis. One of these is that players like to trap in poker. The big blind trapped both of his opponents by waiting until he was forced to reveal his real strength.

A player's action in the later rounds is usually a more accurate indication of their hand than the initial betting rounds. Only when the player who holds a big hand feels that his opponent(s) is/are trapped does he come to life. Sklansky discussed in The Theory of Poker that once the pot becomes big there is no longer a need to remain deceptive. The big blind laid a perfect trap by slow playing until there was no further need to be deceptive. He held pocket 5's and had flopped the full house.

Defense mechanisms such as rationalization and denial play tricks on a lot of poker players' minds. We even hear statements that reflect these defense mechanisms all the time at the poker table. Both can cause us to make further mistakes in our play during the remainder of the poker session but it can also influence our future play as well.

Don't allow rationalization to trick you into thinking you played correctly or outright deny when you made a bad play. These mechanisms only compound your mistakes over time. By remaining objective you learn from your mistakes and prevent making the same one later on. Sure, it might be bad luck, but don't just attribute it to bad luck until you have analyzed the situation completely. You just might find that luck had little to do with the actual outcome. Finally, assumptions cause a lot of errors in judgment. Don't let them influence you too much, especially when the other variables are telling you differently.

This particular situation where you hold a strong but beaten hand is something we all experience a time or two early on in poker. It is one we have to personally experience in order to really understand what had transpired. By remaining objective, the lesson is relatively cheap. But if we deny or rationalize the play of our hand then we don't learn the lesson and it becomes much more expensive in the future.