Were the blinds 30/60 or 15/30? I'm at work at the moment, so I can't really check.

Blinds must have been 15/30.

Anyway, other than raising more preflop I would have folded to the checkraise. If villian in the hand is who I think he is, he's a very good player and isn't going to mess around with a big checkraise like that. Occasionally you will get semibluffed out of the hand by Axh but a good player is most likely to call a raise with a wired pair, and so the checkraise smells of a set. Even if he has [Kh] you are a slight dog and you have virtually no folding equity. You shouldn't risk your tourney life on a coinflip at best (and most likely drawing to a 2-outer) when you have invested less than 20% of your stack into the pot and blinds are this small.

I am not sure what your pre flop bet was because 90 doesn't work with 30/60. What every it was if it wasn't at least 3X the BB it wasn't enough. I like 4 or 5X the BB and to get QQ heads up.

You still have people that will not only call a big raise with small PP's but will push all in thinking you are playing AK or AQ. Now what happens sometimes in a MTT is if you notice someone playing tight weak you can call there raise from the blinds or EP then just bet into them after the flop and they will fold if they missed there hand. He didn't bet he wanted to check raise. Check raise = I'm getting tricky because I have a monster.

You are not going to see a check raise with just a flush draw. So once you were check raised you have to start asking what does he have? TPTK, JJ, QQ, KK, AA or a set. You can rule out 2 pair because the flop was rags. Of those choices your hand beats 2 of them and ties a third.

Your play wasn't bad just bad timing. If you read any of my post you saw where I was knocked out of 2 MTT's with QQ yesterday. The hot hand for me lately has been 10,J. Other times QQ will be the one winning the most hands. As so many like to say "That's Poker".

Is an open raise of 90 not standard in tournaments then? Should I have been raising to 120? 150? Ah sorry - I had the blinds wrong: 15/30 (I too was at work!)

Damn, I overanalysed the hand so much - I thought I was being so clever thinking "I know he doesn't know I have a big hand", when actually my poker instincts should have kicked in: check-raise vs overpair = bad!

ps The opponent was Nortonesque, certainly plenty good enough for me

pps Just checked the blinds Nortonesque - they were indeed 15/30 ... I didn't even make it to 25/50!

I vary my raises when opening a pot with a hand like QQ from 3xBB to 5xBB. In this case it's early so in any case it's less than 10% of your stack and 66 will have implied odds to draw to a set if he thinks you are playing a big pair. Even if he thinks you are on AK or AQ that flop is perfect for a check/raise and you said you'd been pushed out a few times so maybe he was thinking about that as well.

I was playing pretty tight from the blinds early on -- even against Ricardoon, who stole almost every time it folded around to him, I only played back a couple times. So I think you can give me credit for a reasonable hand here. I'm just not going to go crazy defending when the blinds are small.

Early on it's about survival, so if a player is betting strong, you generally want to give credit. Chances are good he's giving you credit (especially if your stack can do damage to his).

I think 3x the BB is fine against most BTP players. Early on there isn't a lot you can do about the implied odds, other than geting away from your hand more easily.