an pivotal hand in a big tournament

[Temp Hutter]

I enjoy reading various hand stories so I decided to share one of my favorites. It is from the 10K WPT event at Foxwoods last November:

It is after the dinner break on the first day. The hero has just over T30K in chips and the villain has about 2 or 3K more than the hero. The average is somewhere around T15K. The blinds are 300-600 with a 75 ante. Hero has not played many pots at this table and has a fairly tight image. The villain (a solid player from what I have seen so far) is in middle position and raises to T2,400 (most of table had been raising to T1,800 or T2,000). Everyone folds to the hero in the SB who has KK. Hero raises an additional T4,000 to try and take the pot down right there. Villian hesitates a few seconds and calls. The flop comes Q-Q-4. Hero decides to find out where he stands and bets T6,000 (just less than half the pot). His thinking is that if the villian calls or raises hero is in trouble and will get out. The villian thinks for about a minute and raises all-in. Hero will still have almost T19,000 in chips if he folds.

Hero's immediate instinct is to fold. He hesitates before folding to think about what has happened to this point. What hands could the villain be holding? If he had A-Q would he have called the initial T4,000 raise before the flop? If he had AA wouldn't he have raised a smaller amount and wouldn't he have re-reraised before the flop? If he had QQ wouldn't he be playing that hand much slower than pushing all-in? I don't think he would have called the T4,000 raise with pocket 4's. My best guess is that he has KK or JJ. I do not think he would make this play with A-K.

Should our hero put his tournament life at stake right here based on a read of JJ? Should he just fold and wait for a better situation?

So after about 3 minutes our hero decides...