This was a hard fought battle indeed. While your hero cruised to the final table via. two or three 50/50's and some well orchestrated thievery, half of this 4 hour grind was spent shorthanded against some rather tough opponents. Fortunately the best player at the final table and the biggest stack was to my right which enabled me to avoid some potentially difficult situations.
-Key mistake shorthanded: when 5 handed I was trying to avoid said enemy two to my right but picked up KJs. I called enemy's (tight) standard 2.5 x raise in pos. and flopped top pair K's with a KQx flop. (we both had about 35 BB's and were basically tied for 1st place with the next highest stack having no more than 20 BB's and the 2 others roughly 10 BB's each).
-Note that there were 49 entrants at 109$ each and top 7 paid. The bulk of the prize pool was in the top two spots; roughly 993$ for 2nd and 1433$ for 1st
-So naturally said enemy followed up on the flop with a standard 1/2 pot c-bet. Your hero half-stepped by raising minimum (note that when I make a weak play like this I can't help but think of the song: Ain't no Half Steppin' by Big Daddy Kane). Enemy called, turn came 8 and we both checked river came 2
and enemy fires a healthy 2/3 pot bet. Since I couldn't really put him/her on a hand that beat me I called with top pair J kicker. Enemy promptly turned over pocket 8's for a set of 8's which made me thoroughly ill, he had turned trips! arggghhh!!!. Pretty unlucky; But why did I raise min. on the flop? Well I was v. concerned about my pos. visa vis the other players. What was I scared of? KQ or AK was my unnatural fear.
-Solution: I should have made a healthy raise on the flop of at least 3.5x+ to put my opponent to the test. Instead I made a raise which was easily called by a v. large range of hands.
-Fortunately for me I doubled right away and continued to play solidly for the duration of the tournament.
Moral of the story: Don't half step and never fear the unlikely.
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