[Any2ForU]

I had a hand in a $500 Ultimate Poker Challenge MTT at The Plaza that has been hotly debated between friends. Here's the situation:

Background:
A player three to my left was continuously re-raising my raises and forcing me to make some pretty big lay downs in the previous 2 hours. I had a pretty good read on him and knew he was capable of doing that with pretty marginal hands. I believe the blinds were $100/$200 with a $25 ante and around $1,900 in chips. At this stage he had me covered by a pretty comfortable margin.

Hand:
Everyone folded around to me in the cutoff and I had A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]. At this point my decision was to either make a standard raise to $600-$650 leaving me with about $1,300 and give him the opportunity to try and make another play against me in which I would be forced to gamble as a slight favorite (58.8% vs. 41.2%) with the possibility of being eliminated just short of the money, or raise all-in and take that play out of his hands (which is what I did). After going in the tank a little and then agonizing over having to fold the hand he showed the J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]T [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].

Debate:
My position to avoid the confrontation in face of elimination appears to be opposed by a few of my friends. Their feeling is that I should have made the standard raise and enticed the guy to play against me as a dog. They feel that it would be better to try and accumulate more chips as a favorite in that position. My question to that theory is: How many times in a tournament do you want to take that gamble for all of your chips? I'm not certain of the math, but, you can only lose that gamble once and you're done. My guess is you could probably only mathematically take that gamble between 2 or 3 times before you are likely to lose one of them (anyone know this probability?). My contention is that I would rather pick up the blinds and the antes in that spot and look for better spots to make plays and accumulate chips and possibly take a confrontation as a bigger favorite later.

Result:
I went on to take 4th. If I play that hand differently I either would have doubled up and maybe went on to win it, or I could have lost that hand and been done.

Which play would you make and why? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]