Giving and Taking

A response to a fellow Railbird's post about hitting top pair after raising pre-flop and betting every street only to be drowned by a river flush card:

I know it's been pounded into my head since I started playing that you can't give free cards.

However I think this is a place where you want to do just that. You only have a pair and you KNOW you won't get rid of a flush draw with any reasonable bet. So check. Then if the turn is safe, fire off the 2/3 pot bet, giving the player his 9 outs only once, thereby reducing his odds of winning by nearly half.

This is a helpful tactic in smallish buy-in loose-passive tournaments. Of course, you're basically losing chips by not betting on every street when you are ahead. But in a tournament you can only rarely win the thing with a single hand; you can always lose it.