Earlier today I was playing a turbo $105 heads up, online tourney against a good player whose screenname I can't recall. For the sake of literary merit we'll call him Jerry. The blinds were 30-60, I had 1300 chips (after making a frantic comeback from 700) and he had 1700 when the hand started.

Hero SB (button) Ad 10c Raises to 180.
Jerry BB calls 180.

When he called 180, something about his tempo told me he didn't have a pair or a strong ace. I just felt like under the exact situation, (I had been raising alot) he would reraise with any hand that was beating me. I was also fairly certain he didn't have middle suited connectors. 180 was a fairly healthy bet (10% of his chips) and he'd called prefunctorily, without giving much thought to folding or reraising. So in my mind, I was defining his exact holding as either KQ, KJ, K10, QJ, Q10 or J10. If I was right then I got a dream flop for my hand.

Flop 10s 8s 6d

Jerry leads for 180. I deliberate for a second or two, going back to my preflop read. I felt like Jerry had a pair of tens with either a (K,Q or J kicker) but I also feared a flush draw or a pair/gutshot type of hand. The more I thought, I began throwing out the possibility of any drawing hands and figured out Jerry's exact hand was Q 10.

Now what to do? I could smooth call in position (a typical play I'll make if I feel like I have my opponent dominated). However, I feared if I smooth called and then a spade, 7 or 9 fell, then Jerry would be able to get away from the hand easily. Hence, I decided to move all in. Usually in a tourney, I like to make an intermediate raise when I'm pot commited, thusly giving my opponent some rope to hang himself by reraising. However, in this spot I really thought my overaggressive play would sell the notion that I was semi bluffing with a nut flush draw.

Alas, Jerry thought for a while then folded his Q 10 face up. I read his cards exactly after the flop and almost exactly pre flop(which is much harder to do) and still won the minumum. I give Jerry alot of credit for folding this hand. He must have put me on an overpair or a set (which means in the game of ESP he was way behind) and was obviously leading with his top pair defensively rather than offensively. I think most players would call me in a turbo heads up game since that's a drawing board and many of my likely hands are draws, but Jerry folded and went on to win the match when his Ac Kc beat my Ad Qd in a five card race. (A hand we both played well, but he was lucky to have me dominated.)

I don't really need any advice on the play of this hand. Obviously, I should have just made the standard intermediate raise on the flop and hope he fired back. But I did think this hand would inspire some creative responses about similar situations. How many of you have ever read someone's hand cold and then had it backfire on you? Or better yet, how many of you have won a big pot you wouldn't have been able to steal if ESP weren't involved?