Everest Poker $100k Guaranteed

I was up around $4.2k in cash games today when I decided to try and fit in some of the Sunday tourneys that I missed out on last week. The first one was the EverestPoker $100k Guaranteed ($100+9) that started at 18:30. 765 players showed up, creating an overlay of $23,500. Right off the bat I was pretty shortstacked, throughout the first 2 hours I never had an above average stack.

Then as we approached the bubble I picked up a few decent pots by stealing and before I knew it I was in the money. My stack dwindled down after that though and once again I found myself extremely shortstacked. Through a series of all-ins that luckily remained uncalled, I was always able to keep my head above water. I ended up pushing a lot of crap because that's the only thing I was being dealt and there was no way I was going to fold away my chance at a big score.

When we eventually hit the final table I was 7th in chips. A few players were eliminated right away and I found myself shortstacked as ever. Once again I resorted to a series of all-ins with poop until AA finally made it's way to my screen. I raised it up, someone repushed with 66 and my hand held, instantly catapulting me to the chiplead. One by one, we eliminated a couple players and by now we were 4 handed.

The payouts were:
1st $22k
2nd $12k
3rd $9k
4th $7k

I then picked up KK in my SB and made a standard 3BB raise into the BB, who responded with an all-in. It didn't take me too long to find the call button and my hand held up against AJo, making me a huge chipleader with 3 left. I then began to push around the other two players, knowing that neither of them wanted to leave. I ended up shoving 43s in my SB into the BB who called with ATo and we were off to the races :) A sweet flop of T33 sent my opponent packing and I was now heads up for the win.

I had a 800k-200k chip advantage from the beginning. I had A9 and shipped it to him from my SB and he instacalled with K9. Everything went down right to plan but he found a miracle King on the river to save himself and give himself the chiplead on top of it all. I grinded back up a little but eventually went all-in with QJ only to be called by KQ. No miracles happened and I was out in 2nd place for $12k.

Any player who has played a final table knows how big of a disappointment it is not to come in 1st place. It doesn't matter what tournament it is, it's always bitter. To have the taste of victory on my tongue but have it ripped away by a suckout is not fun, but life goes on. At the end of the day I can still be really happy about the way the tournament worked out. Thanks to Olli, Curd, Gerli and Sutti for the support at the final table!