A very interesting hand came up where I was knocked out ... and I want to discuss this hand with you guys.

I got drawn to a smaller table with Moonie, Donald, Ryan, and two other guys. Great table. I felt very confident with this table, as I could run over everyone and end up at the final table with healthy chips.

In any case, Ryan is basically running the table over. He's been getting great hands and basically accumulating a lot of chips.

Donald eventually goes all-in for about 5x the BB. Ryan calls the all-in. I look down and see T9o and decide to call.

It should be noted that I like to play all-in pots because players usually soft-play all-in hands. Ryan jokingly says, "Hey, let's check it down to the river." I say "no" because it's unethical to do such a thing (collusion) against Donald.

Flop comes 9JQ. I decide my straight draw isn't enough to bet with someone all-in on a dry sidepot, so I check it. Turn comes K. I've made my straight. I decide that the flush draw is something I can make sure I don't hit, so i check it down. The river comes a safe blank, so I decide to make a very small value bet (hopefully he'll call with a small pair) after he checks. Then he goes all-in.

Now, I don't like this move. I'm thinking that because I feigned weakness that he's taking advantage to try to push me out of the pot.

I have seen players use the all-in strategy to try to protect the side pot to the less dangerous player. The reasoning is that it's a lot safer for a short stack to have some chips then to give the 2nd chip leader a sizable stack.

The reasoning in my mind goes like this:

I have the 2nd best hand available on the board. Only hand that can beat me is AT. If someone was holding the AT and someone made a weak value bet on the river, one would try to make a small reraise to get value from the hand. If you're holding the nuts in a situation like this, moving all-in is going to get you absolutely no value for your hand.

I also have to worry about getting Donald out. At this point, I'm reasoning that Ryan picked up trips or two pair and is trying to push me out; an all-in when someone is all-in is a very weak move; I've seen it happen many many times before.

So I decide that Ryan has two pair or trips and is trying to push me out of the pot and hope he has Donald beat. So I throw out everything about pot odds and call him ... the AT is the only hand that can beat me.

So of course he has it. But I wasn't too pissed about my call, I think it was the right move to make there. I had to worry about Ryan being crazy (we should note he tried to bluff me out of a ~$80 pot a few hands before) and trying to protect his chip stack. And really, how could AT play like this? At worst, I figured we were looking at a split pot, and I wanted to send a message that he couldn't just push me around with his large stack.