Poker Player of the Year (part 2)

So I ended up winning last nights NLHE Shootout tournament. We ended up with 4 tables (about 9 players a table). Top 2 from each table advanced to the final table. My table took the longest to finish as we were playing 4 handed for quite some time. When we got to 3 handed, we were all pretty even in chips. I won two critical races (races meaning near coin flip situations that is typically from one person having a pocket pair and the other having over cards which is approx. 55% to 45% in favor of the pair, although for a small pair, the odds would flip the other way due to counterfeiting) which gave me a good chip advantage going to the final table.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on the final table. One of the chip leads who I often play cash games with decided to "donk"-off his chips (people who make stupid moves and lost chips/money are referred to as donkeys). So in the matter of two hands, he was busted out. I won some hands, stole some hands, and lost some hands, but eventually made it to the last 3. I had the chip lead, but lost a race that made me the short stack. The blinds were pretty high (I think 1000/2000), so I couldn't wait around for a great hand, so I pushed whenever I had a good hand.

A key hand came up where the chip lead pushed with KQo and I called with A9 spades. I won that pot and a few more which gave me a substantial ship lead over 2nd place after 3rd place busted out (I had about 5x as many chips). For the last hand, I pushed all-in with A7o and he called with A3o. My edge held up and took down the tournament. I got $285 out of it ($20 buy-in) and got an additional 428 points putting me in 2nd place and pretty close to taking over 1st (928 points vs 1051).

Tonight there's a deuce-to-seven triple draw tournament which I'll skip to spend some time with my wife :)