I can't believe I read the whole thing!

But I did and I was mesmerized. Thanks for posting it.

It looks like you were still playing hands when you were the #3 stack with 9 places paying exactly the same thing. I suppose it was unlikely to hurt you much at that point unless you made a huge mistake. But were you tempted to just get up and leave the table and fold into the money?

Definitely!

Once I hit around 25k with 80 players left I calculated out what the average stack would be for the final nine - its 47.5k. I hit 50k and said to myself - don't do anything stupid...

But I'd much rather play it out and make others work harder...

/d

Here's some more information about the tournament. Who says you need premium hands to win a tournament:

AA - 0
KK - 2
QQ - 2
JJ - 4
TT - 1

AKs - 0
AKo - 1
AQs - 1
AQo - 1
AJs - 1
AJo - 3
KQs - 0
KQo - 1

99 - 2
88 - 2
77, 66, 44, 33, 22 - 1 each

---------------------------------

On the other hand:

42o - 6
65o - 4
83o - 5
85o - 4
T3o - 4
J3o - 4
J3s - 4
J6o - 4
A3o - 5
A6o - 5
ATo - 4