Home MTT madness, with bonus hand!

[KaiShin]

I'm pretty inexperienced at MTT's in general, only played a few online and this is my second live tourney which my friend is putting together for all our poker playing buddies. He's had good turnouts so far, with over 50 people at the first one and over 20 at this one. Types of players range from inexperienced and unpredictable to solid and tricky. I didn't place in the first tourney but have made it to the final table in this one, and am sitting amongst the chip leaders.

Villain in this case is a fairly new player, but one whom I've played with before. He's loose and passive, and tends to limp in PF with all sorts of junk hands. He's fairly easy to push off of hands, but is improving steadily and knows when to push his edge on draws and not just made hands.

Prizing structure is top 5, 50%-5%
Blinds are 250/500
Hero w/ ~6,000
Villain w/ ~5,000

Preflop (7 players): Hero is SB with Q [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]8 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
UTG folds, MP1 folds, MP2 calls, Villain calls, Button folds, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop (4 players): 5 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]
Hero checks, BB checks, MP2 checks, <font color="red"> Villain bets 1000 </font> , <font color="red"> Hero raises to 2000 </font> , BB folds, MP2 folds, <font color="red"> Villain raises to 4000 </font> , Hero folds.

Think this was the wrong time to push, being so close to the bubble? I tend to step up my aggression close to the bubble because people tighten up so much, but it has bitten me in the ass before. What's your advice?

[PktAcesSoWht]

I don't understand why you min raised the flop after checking it? If you were going to play this hand even after the bet of 1000, why not just call it? I would have folded this hand after he bet 2/3 of the pot. At this moment you have a straight draw and no flush cards. This was a fold situation to me. I would not have min raised. You have him covered. If you wanted to make a move you should have pushed all-in here instead of reraising to 2000.

you put max pressure on him to fold, and if he calls you may still win, and if not, you still have about 1000 left.

[KaiShin]

Yeah, I figured his large bet meant he didn't have the flush, but probably had a big [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] and was drawing to it. I guess if I wanted to represent and make a move I should have gone all-in instead, but from previous hands I noticed that he could be pushed around fairly easily. Obviously I misapplied that read on this particular hand.

Next time I think I'll just fold it the first time around [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]