Earlier in this same tournament, I had flat called from the button with that same trouble hand, A-J suited.

The player just to my right, the cutoff seat, had raised it from $30 to $150. I had played with this guy enough times before to guess that this was one of those rare situations where a call was correct instead of a raise or fold. The big blind also played along.

The flop came small and raggy, something like 9, 6, 3. The big blind led out for $30. The cut-off called. There was $525 in the pot. For $30, I was going to look at another card. A deuce came off on the turn, and the big blind again bet $30. The cut-off folded. I just could not imagine what kind of hand could warrant a $30 bet, and so even though I thought there was a decent chance I was getting milked (or set up for a trap), I didn’t fold.

A Queen hit the river, and here it came again: $30. I can honestly say that I called 99.98% sure I was beaten. For $30, I wanted to see what the big blind had been doing, in case I faced him again. He turned over K-10, and I was startled when the chips were pushed my way. This had been a pure curiosity call. I was not calling for the size of the pot. I just wanted to know.

I do admit, I considered throwing the hand away, and so the big blind was taking a very inexpensive shot at stealing the pot, but the pot was just too large to try this play. I had plenty of chips. $30 wasn’t going to mean a thing. If he had bet just $100, my hand would probably have gone in the muck.

The lesson here? If you’re going to try to steal a pot with a garbage hand, you have to make sure that you make it expensive enough so that the other player isn’t likely to call just for the information he’ll gain by doing so.