Tips for accumulating max. chips with big pocket pairs?

[reallybigshoe]

In the last few months of playing MTTs, it seems to me that in order to make it deep into the money, what is most critical is getting the most bang for your buck those handful of times you get AA and KK, especially in the middle stages when playing normal ring-style poker (playing small pairs for set value, suited connectors, etc.) is no longer viable.

In the last tourney I was in, i got AA four times, but only made significant strides in chips on two of those occasions. One I think can be forgiven, in that I put in a modest raise in middle pos. with one limper in front of me and everyone folded. In the other, I think i misplayed the hand for max. chip value.

Here it is:
Everyone folds to the CO, who raises five times the blind. This player had done the same blind steal in two previous orbits. I'm in BB with AA, and i min. raise her back. She calls. the flop comes 10-8-5 (two diamonds), and since neither of my aces was a diamond, I got worried about check/calling to the turn only to potentially see another diamond pop up and now maybe she's got a flush draw out there as well. So i pushed the flop and she folded.

We had roughly the same chip stacks, and I feel if i could have coaxed her out of them on this hand, i could have made it much deeper in the tourney.

Does anyone have any advice on how to better play these kinds of hands?

[Matador225]

You might not have been able to get much more out of her if she was actually trying to steal blinds with only a decent hand like QJ or something. I wouldn't have been so worried about the two diamonds off the flop and maybe you should have bet less (I don't recall how much you bet). I don't think you played the hand very badly and you probably couldn't have got anything out of it unless you just checked hoping she would hit something.

Hope I helped,
Jack