An Interesting MTT Play....What does everyone think?

[krammatrix]

I've been playing a lot of MTTs lately, and i've seen a lot of people do the following. A player raises with a good hand, such as AK, and the flop doesn't help them. Instead of making a large bluff bet or just checking, they make these smallish bets, maybe even the size of the bb or 2X the bb, just so that they can take a free card and see where their opponents are. I tried this tactic a few times and it has seemed to work pretty well, as it gives you a good idea of where your opponent is in the hand without committing a lot of chips. It looked like a stupid play at first, but it has given me some valuable information and saved me some chips on many occasions. What do u guys think of that play?