Early going, I have around 4500 chips. I've identified a maniac at my table. Like all good maniacs, he's making his 1-out draws on the river. He's even done it on three hands in a row (hitting me on one of them). I love playing against these lucky bastages, mostly because they're usually kind enough to double me up.
That's exactly what this one did. I didn't have to show much patience before I got a monster. I don't remember what the cards were exactly, but I do remember the play. On the flop, I had the absolute nuts. Knowing maniac's betting patterns, I bet minimum and like clockwork, he called. The turn was a blank. I checked, he pushed all in. That was his sign of weakness. He had no hand. I called and took him out that hand. He had a 1-out draw to a straight.
Fast-forward to much later in the tournament, now I'm at around 20k in chips. I've been in the top 20 in the tournament twice so far. I get moved to a table with a couple others who are right near my stack size. A couple cycles of the button later, I'm at around 60k and the rest of my table is under 10k. I'll attribute this mostly to good hands coming my way rather than any sort of poker playing godhood on my part.
Anyway, around this time I'm damn near chip leader, but we're also right on the bubble. 20 people need to bust out before we all make the cutoff. (Top 170 go to the main tourney.) At this point, everyone's play tightened up - tighter than a dolphin's butt as one of the players put it. As the play tightened up, most players at my table started chatting.
In a normal tournament at this point, I'd have been gunning for them, stealing blinds, forcing them to make tournament-life decisions just to take their chips. At blinds of 500/1000 and later 1k/2k, I'd collect fast. But in this one, all that mattered was that I got into the top 170. There was no advantage to coming in first. And I knew I wouldn't stick it out that long anyway. It was already too late at night and I have to work in the morning.
So I started chatting and only going into hands for fun once in a while. The interesting part of that was I was still winning most hands. That final 20 took what seemed like a good hour to drop off. During that time, I intentionally doubled up three players at my table so they wouldn't be blinded out. Why? Again, mainly because 170 and 1 were exactly the same reward and there was no way I'd miss 170. Partly because at that point I was completely in control of the entire table - I was the strongest player there. I wanted them all in the finals with me. And partly because my chip stack enabled me to do it.
So just as we're cresting that 170 mark, I look at the leader board and who should I find in first place? Me, with 131k chips. That was the first time I'd ever been in first position in an MTT. It was a hell of a feeling, let me tell you.
Shortly after the 170 bubble broke, everyone spazzed out. I'm talking they're throwing all-in with 36o and equally craptastic hands. So I played along. Any face card, I'm all-in.
Took me about 5 minutes to bust out in 30-something place.
Fun night. If you're in the big game, see ya Thursday. May you all come in second!
