Explain how bluffing into a dry side pot, post flop, is a sound play,cause I don't see that If you hit your hand, or have what looks strong compared to the board okay fine. But say, as an example, that you call a push with AKd, and the flop comes Q-6-8 all black, hpw is betting into whoever else is still in the hand a strong play? Regardless of your mindset re/ limpin v winning or whatever, all you've got with 2 cards yet to come is 2 pretty cards, no hand and no draw. I don't see where leading with it is a strong play at all. If you can get a free card, take it.
You've got to think in the context of the whole tournament - like I said earlier, if this is happening around the time of the bubble, you should be happy for the short stacks to hang around. The longer the bubble drags on, the more chances you'll have to accumulate chips from players who just want to limp into the money, and are throwing away a lot of their playable
hands to ensure that they do.
In this context, checking a pot down just to increase the chances of the bubble bursting is actually a pretty weak play. It says "I'm not a strong bubble player, I just want to get to the money". Valid strategy, but not a strong one. If you're still a long way from the money, it probably doesn't matter so much.
There's another argument for doing it too that says your ATK are a much better chance to win against one opponent than they are against two. You have to think about the circumstances under which the all in bet was made, but if the player has been blinded all the way down, or they've just been crippled, their likely range of holdings is wide and you might even be ahead of them. Bet to eliminate the third player from the hand, and your chances of winning the pot go up - that's playing to win.
In your example hand, if the all in player has, say, AJ / KJ / AT / KT (not unreasonable) and you manage to push K8 or a flush draw out of the pot, you've maximised your chance of winning. I'd see that as a sound play.
Yes, I understand this goes against accepted practice for most people, and sometimes the right call might be to just check the hand down. Maybe it's even the right call most of the time. But there are good arguments for playing the hand other ways sometimes.
