Sunday's 20K

I made it deep into FTP 30K on Sunday, finishing 13th.

Here is the knockout that I think I played badly:

Full Tilt Poker
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t4000/t8000
(Ante: t1000)
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: t106810
UTG+1: t116548
CO: t106080
Hero: t79086
SB: t239000
BB: t202814


Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is Button with :9h :9s
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to t16000, CO folds, Hero raises to t48000, 2 folds, UTG+1 calls t32000 (pot was t82000).


Flop: :tc :7c :6h (t114000, 2 players)
UTG+1 is all-in t67548, Hero calls all-in t30086.

Uncalled bets: t37462 returned to UTG+1.

I think I should have just smooth called pre-flop. I raised thinking this guy was raising on a steal or didn’t have the strongest of hands. So now, we have rather large pot and I think the button felt he had to push because of the size of the pot, and of course I had to call. My read was right, the other guy had AcQc, a Queen fell on the turn, and out I went. If I had smooth called, I think the other guy may have bet another 16k on the flop and I could have folded the turn bet. One other line would be to push pre-flop, but I think I would have been called if I did that (which why I did not in the first place).