[brianmarc]

Folding is such a no-brainer that if you call, you certifiably have no (poker) brain. Short of flopping a boat, what can you even be hoping for? Bottom set? So a couple hearts come on the flop and you pay a couple bets to see the turn. Now you hit the flush (forget the straight flush-that's pixie dust poker!). Now what? With all the preflop action strong likelihood that there are a couple (at least) A's out there-and that includes the nut heart. So you pay a couple more big bets to see the turn praying for a non-diamond. And if you dodge that bullet, you could still be beat by a bigger flush or possibly a boat.

Recently I have seen more and more of this kind of tautological rationalizaton ("getting 9.5/1") for expensive, super-loose preflop calls of hands that are designed for playing cheaply. Duh...Course the odds are high-that's because there's a lot of opposition!

Ironically, it seems that these kind of mistakes may be more frquent at high- rather than low-limit poker. The only possible explanation is that the rich fish are less concerned about their money than the stiffs grinding out a few bucks at 5/10 or whatever.