AK and i'm lost

[blainestar]

I pretty much only play cash games and consider myself mediocre at best at MTTs so any input, as standard as it may seem, would be helpful.

This is a live $230 buyin tourney with 140ish people to start(top 10 get paid). BTW This tourney has an awful structure which pretty much ensures at this stage(final 2-3 tables) over 60% of the preflop raises are allin. We're down to about 25-30 people.

Blinds are 1K-2K no antes, Hero has 23K

-Hero gets A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] UTG and makes it 6500
3 folds
-Tight older guy dusts off his last 5K and sticks it in
every1 else folds to BB who has about 26K to start the hand
-BB goes in the tank for about a minute, cuttin out his chips then looking at the pot while mulling it over. My read was he was a little weak, probably has a KQ, QJ, K10 suited, or a weak Ax suited type of hand. Basicly some kinda hand that ur avg. live donks have a hard time folding. Btw BB seemed like a pretty decent player who knew what he was doing. He calls the 4500 more so theres ~ 16K in the pot and ~3K in the sidepot between me and the BB.

FLOP : Q[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]
BB checks...Hero(16.5K)????


Say we decide to check and

TURN : Q [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] [A [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]]
BB checks again... Hero????


One sidenote i almost forgot.... as the dealer was in the process of spreading the flop, the BB had ALREADY started to check, he definately hadn't seen the flop yet. This OBV gave me the impression he wanted to just check it down and try and eliminate this guy. I'm not sure why he would want to do this but whatever, it's live poker so I don't get suprised at anything i see.

[paddymcg21]

I probably just shove pre flop, if you're going to raise you pretty much have to commit to shoving any flop otherwise ur stack will dwindle. As played id shove this flop, he will probably fold all pairs up to 99 depending on what image you have. Even if he calls with a Q or J you have a fair few outs. It's not close enough to the bubble to start thinking about checking players down. Defo a shove for me but I prefer to open shove pre flop.

[Airharley]

Shove Preflop. When everyone folds you increase your stack by better then 10% and if someone calls you get to look at all 5 cards. The only hands you should be worried about are AA and KK, everything else is pretty much a race. You need to get a larger stack to win this tournament. As played I don't think the check on the flop is too bad, but I think you need to bet that turn. The only decent bet you have is to just push. 16K in the pot, 16.5 in your stack, so a PSB seems right. I think sometimes an Ax hand that you have beat will call your all in.

[betgo]

I have no problem with your raise size preflop with this hand. I would probably push though.

I would check behind on the flop with the dry sidepot. I would bet the turn. If villain can beat TPTK, he won't check it down, so no reason to give a free card on that board.