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FYI, If strong experienced players make a certain play, it is usually not because they are bad plays (except if you're Hellmuth laying down KK to 77), but its more a question of trying to figure out what he must have believed to make it a good play.

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*Scritch scritch* This sounds like you are giving someone a free pass just because they are "good". I don't really agree with that. If sdplayer had been raising a ton of hands or something, it would seem reasonable, but seeing as there is no indication that that is the case, calling a raise with A9s at a full table is a bad play, and I don't care who does it...

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I'm not giving someone a free pass because they are good. I'm asking if there might be some logic that we're missing on the surface, because they are a good enough player not to make obvious and bad mistakes. And since Minh has more bracelets than most I think I'm better served trying to think thru why he made the call and what he was thinking, rather than immediately dismiss his play as bad.

And while calling with A9s in that situation doesn't sound like a great play to me, you could make a decent argument for it since Minh's getting ok odds preflop (in fact correct odds to call if he knew QQ was your hand), and he could reasonably expect a player who would check down top set when a diamond flush shows up to be the kind of player who might laydown TT/JJ in that spot.