Good call bad call

Addendum to the previous post about last night's Muck session:

The guy I described as Mr. Steamy on the first hand of the night turned out to be a pretty bad player -- calling every hand, betting into a big crowd with nothing, showing almost no regard at all for the texture of the board. He was caught trying to steal numerous times, and if he was heads-up with another player you could count on him to get out of line, a tendency I noticed and planned to exploit.

So at one point I was in the big blind with A-7 offsuit. A late-position player limped in without raising and Steamy completed the small blind; I checked along. The flop came raggedy -- no big cards, no possible straights or flushes -- so when Steamy bet out I decided to call and see what happened. The late-position player folded. The turn was a king, the river some blank that left the board uncoordinated, but now any king, any 9, any pocket pair or anything else that paired the board beat me. Even a bigger ace, not unlikely, would win. Still, I didn't believe Mr. Steamy, and when he fired yet another bet I thought only briefly before calling him down.

"Ah shit," Steamy said, "if you can call you win," and he held his cards like he was about to flick them into the muck.

"Wait a minute," I said. "I called you. Let's see what you've got."

This is something I often say in these situations, and I've been slow to learn how stupid it is. It's a move that shows an excess of hubris and a deficit of cool. Basically I'm just trying to humiliate a guy who's bluffing, even though he's already admitted by conceding the pot that he was full of shit.

So Steamy, compelled by the rules of poker, fulfilled my request and turned over his cards: Ace-7, the same hand as mine! Cripes! Instead of me winning everything, being rewarded for my excellent read of Mr. Steam as a bullshit artist, we'd now split the pot. Humiliating -- I negated my own good call with the bad call of asking to see the "losing" hand.

The table laughed, as they should, along with a bit of praise for my brave call. I turned red and muttered something about this being why I never have chips at the end of the night.

And then I proceeded to prove the point, losing most of the rest of my two racks before getting up to go home.