Big hands in the bb

[Miffed22001]

Apologies in adavance as i dont have a hand history tracker.

£1 buy-in MTT
Im top 5 with 20K~, 10 seater table.
There are about 80 left and 40 get paid.
Blinds are 1k and 500
I get AsJs on the bb 4 limpers around to me so i check to see the flop.
Flop is A with two spades, one of which is an 8.
I throw out a half pot bet of 3K one caller its about half his stack to call.
Turn is rags so i repeat my bet, this commits him to a 1K push on the river. River pairs the board with 8's. He pushes i call he turns over a set.

Now, i think i read somewhere on this site (im not soure but i did read this somwhere as it was an interesting concept when i did) that playing big hands from the bb without raising the pot is a good play. If you hit your cards, as i did here, top pair and flush draw, then you are probably going to make a nice amount. Therefore i have two questions

First, looking at my play post flop should i have bet the flop harder? Comming out of the bb it may have looked like a steal or a bet on second pair (this would be odd though as all tourney i had bullied this table with the best hands. If i bet other players knew i had a hand, i bluffed only once and nobody had to see my cards. Therefore if i come out of the blinds with a 1/2 pot bet i would have expected people to put me on that ace Whenever people had called my pushes i turned over dominating cards)
I suppose looking now i could have put the caller all in on the flop and asked him to call, im guessing he wouldnt have and i would have taken a decent pot anyway uncontested. So is my post flop play a little week? I honestly didnt think he'd commit any chips never mind practically his whole stack on the turn (maybe i should have commited him here?).

My second question is this. Did my seemingly weak post flop play occur becuse i didnt either raise or push from the bb with AJ? My personal mtt style would suggest i pushed here to either steal a decent pot (5.5K) or to at least be a favourite against any other random hand someone turned over. If this is so what are peoples opinions on playing good hands from the bb in mtts? did i play this wrong preflop and that cost me post flop?
All thoughts welcome.

[ender555]

I wouldn't of raised it preflop either. If you raise it you need to raise it huge like the size of the pot, because you really wouldn't want callers.

After he called half his stack on the flop, put him all in on the turn for sure. Or you could check the flop and see what kind of action they generate. if they bet large enough to allow me to push all in and have one of them reasonably call I would make that play. The only thing you're behind is a set right now...

[Miffed22001]

I see your point.
If a set had been out there though i would have expected a re-raise or a push even to cut the odds on the flush draw?
SImilarily, i had been playin an aggro style when i had hands so to have pushed from the bb with a reasonable hand (i was pretty sure when it came round to me i had the best hand, these other guys were running scared of my aggression from late pos) would not have been an unusual occurance.

[drmcboy]

AJs is not a big hand. Raise it pre flop. I wouldn't slow play anything with 4 limpers. Afterwards assuming HPS bet is your standard, played it fine.

[Miffed22001]

Under normal circumstances agreed AJ is not a big hand, but here i felt i had the best hand with 4 limpers and either noone would call a push or else if someone did i would have the a better chance of winning the hand. I felt, this sounds a little odd, that someone would have had to win the hand off me if i'd pushed rather than me having to catch good cards, if you see what im trying to say.

[ender555]

I agree with miffed, it's good here because you could easily have one of hte limpers dominated and de-stack him with KJs or something.