[crankalicious]

Let me paint a picture and hopefully encourage some responses related to variation in play and how to profit whilst mired in a donkament. (I apologize for the formatting)

I'm early in a 40-person live $65 buy-in at TI in Vegas. I realize early that, humbly, I'm likely one of the better players at the table. One guy is talking incessently about his bad luck chasing flushes and practically jumps up and down when he hits one saying stuff like "finally, things are going my way". I'm drooling as his stack grows thinking it's going to be mine soon. I guy with 7-4os calls me down with bottom pair after I lead out and I lose the hand (admittedly, I played it beyond poorly). So, I'm thinking to myself the entire time: "just wait for your moment". And here it comes:

I'm dealt A9os in the big blind. Two players limp in. I call. The flop comes:

A-4-3 (all spades)

I make a continuation bet to see where I am and these guys call. I'm absolutely sure that both guys are chasing the flush with one card. The next card is:

9d

Here's my question and I hope others have some experience with this. There are two thoughts that cross my mind:

1. Make a min-raise, get these guys to call and come along thinking that I'm doing what they're doing, then extract another bet from each when the river doesn't fall.

2. Push and deny them the odds to chase, thereby taking down kind of a small pot.

My stack is slightly depleted at this point, so I would prefer to get really healthy as opposed to a little healthy. What's your approach here?

I decided to go with option #1 because I felt that even if I made the statistically correct play in denying them calling odds, they wouldn't know not to call. Since they were both donks, I figured one of them would absolutely call me. Better to sucker them in and have the option to fold if another spade came down rather than jeopardize my whole stack. My normal play in the this situation would be to shove.