I learned a valuable lesson Friday night, and a costly one. I am fascinated with tells and reads. There's a guy I've been playing with that's a fantastic reader of hands. I happened to be involved in a hand where I had QJ, and faced a middling raise pre-flop from a guy who is notorious for his tells. There were other callers so I called. The flop came Qxx. The bettor came out with 10 in early position. There were no other callers, so I raised 25. He thinks about it a moment and re-raises 75. At this point, I am trying to get some kind of read on him. He has a couple well-defined tells when he has a big hand, and he wasn't showing them at all. I really wanted to fold. Everything in me told me he had one of three hands, AQ, KK, or AA. There was at that point $162 in the pot and he only had five left. What would amount to $80 to win $167, I only had to be better than 2-1, but if I lost it would mean my large stack would be crippled and my opponent would be established as dominant chip leader. It wasn't really even that close a call for someone who plays like I do. Retreat and fight another day. His tells never even showed a hint of being there though. It was amazing. I was lulled into calling by the fact that he never exhibited the slightest trace of them. He turned over AA. It seems that a good read isn't always very valuable when it makes you go against what you know you ought to do.