[NYCNative]

The TV Forum is quite fun but usually lacking in strategy discussions. This is a strategy question geared towards those who play at levels I probably never will reach which is why I post it here. I love lurking here and seeing how High Stakes players think and you can hopefully shed some light on something that's intrigued me.

I was watching replays of GSN's High Stakes Poker when Daniel Negreanu recieved his infamous succession of coolers - flopping big hands, often enough the absolute nuts, and then getting beat on the turn or river. Negreanu seemed to know he was beat however he still made every single crying call.

I was under the impression that one facet of being a great player is the ability to make big laydowns when you are beat. Not to say that every hand he called was obvious but on one of the hands in particular announcer Gabe Kaplan even said that that one was relatively easy, one that Daniel would realize later on.

I remember reading a baseball pitcher say something like, "People think that a pro pitcher can just put the ball wherever he wants on command but it's not like that at all" as a way of pointing out that the pin-point accuracy that some baseball fans might feel is a given is vastly overstated. In the same vein am I putting unrealistic expectations on the High Stakes professionals (on the show and in the Big Game)? Does a pro really need this in their arsenal to be a profitable player or do they view such crying calls as a part of the game? Or do pros really do possess the ability to make big laydowns but what I saw on TV is too small a sample size, one possibly brought on by players not wanting to get bluffed on TV?