What should I do? (Part 2)

If you haven't yet read the original description of the difficult decision I faced the other day, I suggest doing so here before reading the rest of this post.

It has been about 24 hours since I posted the problem, and there have been 22 comments left--far more than any of my other 800+ posts! I really appreciate the interest so many of you showed, and the thoughtfulness of the answers. It's a little hard to tell for sure, because I'm not positive how many of the "anonymous" commenters are duplicates, but my best count is 11 votes for shoving, 8 for folding. I guess that means that I presented it reasonably even-handedly, as was my goal.

So what happened?

I announced "all in." The middle-position guy instantly folded, as he had been impatient to do the entire time I was thinking about my decision.

The obnoxious jerk didn't do anything at first, just sat there. Then he s-l-o-w-l-y started counting his chip stacks. This took him maybe a minute and a half. At some point he apparently lost track and started over again. Finally he reached his mathematical conclusion, pushed the stacks forward, and said, "$288."

(By the way, this sort of nonsense is completely unnecessary. The dealer cannot take his word for the amount, and will have to count it up again anyway if he wins as the obviously shorter stack. One need merely say "call," and not rudely waste the time of 10 other people who are waiting.)

I turned over my hand, since I think that's the proper and polite thing to do in this situation, though not required. He did not reciprocate. The flop was three unremarkable cards, something like 10-7-2. The turn was an ace. Uh-oh. The river was a third queen.

However, between the turn and the river, Mr. Personality finally decided to show what he had been hiding: two aces.

So I lost, and got the nastiest slow-roll of my life at the same time.

(I was down to about $90 at that point. That went away about 15 minutes later. I had A-Q, raised to $15, got three callers. The flop was Q-10-3. With about $60 in the pot and maybe $75 left, I pushed it in when they all checked to me. An even worse calling station than the one I have been talking about called with just a 10-9 offsuit--second pair, bad kicker, and no draw. But he caught a J and an 8 on the turn and river for runner-runner straight. I took this as a sign from the poker gods that it was time to go home. Ugh.)

One commenter on the original post said something about it being good to learn to fold Q-Q before the flop. Actually, I have very little difficulty doing so, as a general rule. It was the particulars of this situation--the oversized raise and our previous history--that made it a very close decision for me. Absent those factors, it might have taken me ten seconds to decide to muck, but probably not even that long.

It's incredibly difficult to evaluate this in retrospect without being influenced by knowing the outcome. I still find myself going back and forth about it. The arguments for folding are both strong and obvious: a rational player won't call unless he's ahead or you're in a coin flip, and you can wait for situation where you're more clearly a favorite, besides, if you fold he's only taking $15 from you. But then, that confluence of the prior history (and his apparent attitude towards me) and the very peculiar size of the raise just can't be ignored, either. He is not necessarily a rational player, and one can't just assume he will behave like one. In fact, he is plainly a highly emotional player, and it can be presumed that he will act accordingly. Problem is, it's not clear exactly what that implies for a given situation.

So I'm still torn. Obviously, in the most superficial sense I wish I had folded. On the other hand, I analyzed the situation carefully, weighed all of the facts that I had available as well as the best inferences I could make from them, tumbled the math around in my head, considered each of my three options and their possible consequences, and then went with my best conclusion. There's not a whole helluva lot more that one can do in this game (well, other than be right all the time!). It was a lot of money to be risking on such a guess, but, conversely, it would have been a lot of money to leave on the table by folding if I had been right and he had had J-J (my best guess), or even A-K, and was willing to gamble with them for his revenge.

Nineteen other poker players have now read a detailed description of the relevant facts and recorded what they would do, coming out split right down the middle about it, which gives me some measure of cold comfort that the right answer truly is not obvious. Furthermore, even with all the time in the world to ponder it, none of the commenters came up with an argument that I did not consider in the moment--again, some small comfort that my analytic mechanism isn't completely off-kilter.

Of such messy situations is my grocery money made or lost. Guess it's the ramen noodles for me for a while.