"Let's go with that"

Luxor tonight. I'm not in the hand. There is a middle-aged man and his 86-year-old father at the other end of the table in adjacent seats. I have a pretty solid player on my right. A young woman, too new to the table to have a bead on her, is three seats to my left, with the son and father to her left.

Final board is 2-2-5-A-2. (Naturally, I can't resist pointing out what the nuts would be here, though that's not the point of the story.) The father is first to act. He wants to bet, but absent-mindedly makes a hand motion that the dealer interprets as a check, and he doesn't argue the point when the dealer says it will have to stand as a check. (I thought then and still think that this was an honest mistake, not a ruse.) Solid guy on my right bets $25. Son calls. Father raises to $50. Solid guy thinks a while, but finally folds. Son calls. He has an ace. The father has pocket threes. The father sees the pot going to his son and thinks it's a mistake. "I had a full house," he protests. The dealer points out that an ace in the hand gave his son a bigger full house. The father sees his mistake and concedes.

In the inevitable post-hand analysis, solid guy moans, because he folded an ace, which, of course, would have taken half of the pot. But, as he points out, "I thought one or the other of them had the deuce. One of them was sure betting like he had it."

The young woman, almost under her breath, chimes in: "Or like he didn't know what he had."

The dealer hears this, nods to her, and says, "Let's go with that."