Yesterdays tourny was really a nice experience. You hardly had any weak opponents, most players played very aggressive. You did not see too many flops and barely a showdown. After 3 hours I finished in place 301 of 1601 players. Probably I played too tight, so I had to push with mediocre hands. Although I always pushed with the better hand preflop I lost the important coinflips. Here are two hands that made me drop out.
The blinds were at 400/800 and the guy before me was shortstacked and raised the 6th time in row from the button. I was pretty sure the best hand I could give him was a small Ace so I decided to call his push with A9. I was right and he showed A7. Instead of taking him off the table and win a good amount of chips he flopped two pair.
BB (6,755)
UTG+1 (8,636)
MP1 (33,554)
CO (16,710)
BU (7,873)
MP3 (20,041)
UTG (18,395)
UTG+2 (22,815)
MP2 (4,987)
Preflop: Hero is SB with 9d, Ah
7 folds, BU raises, Hero 3-bets, BB folds.
Flop: (0,00 SB) 7h, As, 2c
Turn: (0,00 BB) Jh
River: (0,00 BB) 2s
Results follow (highlight to see):
Hero shows [ 9d, Ah ] two pairs, Aces and Twos
BU shows [ 7s, Ac ] two pairs, Aces and Sevens
Hero wins 6,569 chips with two pairs, Aces and Twos.
BU wins 16,746 chips with two pairs, Aces and Sevens.
After this hand I only had about 8 BBs left and had to push with bad hands. I could double some hands later with AK again, took 3-4 blindsteals and was back at about 15000 chips. Blinds increased to 600/1200 and then my final hand came. The chipleader in first position did a min raise, he raised loads of hands. As I only had 12-13 BBS left I pushed all in with 99 as I was sure he was on a smaller pocket pair or something like A8s-AJ/KQ and thought he might fold my reraise. He called (actually I don´t know why with this shitty hand). Guess what happened? Right, he flopped two pair as well.

Perhaps it was a mistake to reraise. Maybe I should have called and have waited for the flop. But I would have had to fold then, because I didn´t make my set. I was hoping he might fold my reraise or I win the coinflip situation you just can´t avoid at certain blind levels.
MP2 (15,913)
MP3 (23,560)
BU (12,272)
BB (24,975)
UTG+2 (38,204)
UTG+1 (18,595)
SB (24,065)
UTG (52,857)
CO (18,523)
MP1 (14,010)
Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 9c, 9h
UTG raises, 3 folds, Hero 3-bets, 5 folds, UTG calls.
Flop: (0,00 SB) Ts, 5h, Ah
Turn: (0,00 BB) 4d
River: (0,00 BB) 7s
Results follow (highlight to see):
Hero shows [ 9c, 9h ] a pair of Nines
UTG shows [ Tc, Ac ] two pairs, Aces and Tens
UTG wins 34,026 chips with two pairs, Aces and Tens.
After all I can say it was great fun and very thrilling to play this tourny and I will try to qualify for it again. As the buyin was 215$ you can imagine most players were very much better than the usual SnG calling stations. You hardly got any chips from them. Nobody was calling his middle pair down to the river, no stupid calls preflop.