My good friend from New Zealand made this play last night and it sparked a great debate as to how he played it. Hello all, an intriguing hand involving me took place in tonight's Midnight Madness on Full Tilt Poker. I had gained some chips early but lost 2/3 of my stack on this hand, in which I feel could be viewed and commented on by all of you.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4913008

How would you have played this? Did I raise enough pre flop? Should I have just checked my option in the big blind? The flop comes down, in my opinion, very good for me. I had the guy on some kind of face card combo or maybe even AJ or AQ so with a 10 high flop I felt I was good. I was soon proved to be wrong.

Marty, cobb08 and myself discussed this in depth at the time and we came to a conclusion that I should have bet 2/3 of the pot on the flop and then when he shoves, make a decision based on the information I have. Would you agree with this? I certainly learned some stuff from this hand and would like to hear how you would have played this.

Opinion #1 - from "Ares" - Don't raise preflop. Call and hope to flop a set. Fold if you don't get a set. You don't want to be tricky against low-limit/micro-stakes players. They will call you down with mediocre/bad hands, they will hit it and take all your chips or float your c-bets. Its better to just check and maybe try betting the turn if you think you can steal it.

Opinion #2 - from "Turtleknife" - Preflop raising is OK with your stack, but you already have enough chips to go deep in this tournament so aggression balanced with preservation is key to big stack management. That means pot control. Sure you will lose a few, but by being involved in more pots than usual, some are def going to work out for you, and even turn mediocre hands into big winners.

Big pot winners come from really strong hands, but I must say that an under pair with a loose opponent, although likely strong, does not warrant this much action in the pot. You are risking way too much here against an unpredictable opponent who could have called with many hands that have you beat already like 99, TT, AT, KT, QT, JT, not to mention the over-cards you put him that could hit. This is a question of pot control and stack-size play which as a big stack is an important part of the game for gauging the right chip-up opportunities. I think you jumped the gun on this pot and it cost you dearly, even though your opponent was obviously foolish, the question is how much do you want to spend to find out HOW foolish he really is?

If I had raised preflop like you did, I would have bet out 1/2 to 3/4 pot and see what he does. If he comes over the top it's an easy fold and the correct play - even if he is bluffing.

And don't forget to count to 10 before putting a lot of chips in play like in this video.