Poker After Dark - I'm Not Supposed to Make This Call

  Even the best poker players will sometimes make a mistake. Sometimes they even know they are making the mistake while they are making it - yet they can't help themselves. Sometimes they feel compelled by pot odds or want to uphold a reputation, and sometimes they just have a gut instinct that tells them to hang the rules and do what they feel is right.



  In this particular hand, during Battle of the Bracelets week on the hit NBC poker show Poker After Dark, the man with the most cashes at the http://www.launchpoker.com/sp/wsop/ (at the time) knew he wasn't supposed to make a call, but he did. With more than forty bracelets in play from Erik Seidel (eight bracelets), T.J. Cloutier (six bracelets), Layne Flack (five bracelets), Doyle Brunson (ten bracelets), Phil Hellmuth (eleven bracelets), and the recently eliminated Chris Ferguson (five bracelets) anything could happen.



  In this hand it was TJ who knew better. Flack was in the hand, short stacked down to less than twenty five hundred in chips and cash. Layne moved all in pre flop with:






... pushing his $2,350 forward, knowing it was just TJ left to decide his action. TJ is a very tight player, and sure enough when he saw that he was holding:






... he said, "I'm not supposed to make this call..." and Flack nearly won the hand right there. But TJ suspected Layne was up to something, and made the call. The board hit:







... and right away TJ had a near lock. The next two cards made it so:






... and Back to Back Layne Flack was down and TJ doubled up.