The interrogation

I lost a hand last night. Nothing extraordinary. I had Q-10 of spades, missed the flush draw but had paired my 10 on the river. I therefore called a smallish bet from my opponent, who had not played the hand very aggressively, making me think I might be good. As it turned out, he had the A-K of spades (making me glad the flush card didn't come), and had made a higher pair on the turn. It wasn't a big loss, just a kind of run-of-the-mill hand.

As he was stacking up the chips, he said, "I gave you a free card. I think that was a mistake. Would you have called $40 on the turn if I had bet it?"

This is hardly the first time I've been the subject of a post-hand interrogation, but I hate it every time. I think it's incredibly rude.

In case it's not obvious why, just rephrase the question so as to make explicit what it is actually asking: "I'm not sure I extracted all of the chips from you that I could have on that hand. Would you please give me more information about how you play specific situations, so that the next time we're contesting a pot, I can more effectively play against your tendencies and optimize my ability to win the most chips I can possibly squeeze out of you?"

If you're going to ask that, why not just ask your opponent if he could please hand you his stack of chips?

What makes these players think that I'm so stupid that I will answer such questions honestly, and thus help them play better against me?

I knew perfectly well the answer to the question from the guy last night, but instead I gave him my standard, pre-rehearsed BS answer: "I'm not very good at hypotheticals. I have to actually be faced with the situation before I can make a decision."

There's some truth to that, since I do go a lot by the "feel" of a situation. For any given interrogation that gets put to me, that answer might be completely true, completely false, or somewhere in between. I don't much care. My goal is to deflect the question without giving away information and without seeming rude. I think it usually succeeds.

But I'd really prefer not to be put under the bright lights to begin with.