Won the $3 rebuy

It was a very long night of donkamenting. From about 80 left down to 12 I was below average and just tried to stay patient. There were several wackjobs at my table so I couldn't open light, I just had to wait for hands before coming into pots. Finally with 12 left I got some cards and went on a huge rush. I got it in with QQ vs the maniac chip leader's JT on a ten high flop. A ten came on the turn, but the river gave me a flush and I survived.

That moved me up to 3rd, then a few hands later he doubled me up again. I raised the SB with 44 and he called. Flop was 864. Normally I would bet such a drawy board but this guy was a maniac I figured he'd bet his whole range if I checked it to him. So I checked, and he shoved 2.4 million into a 400k pot, I called, he had 82 and I held. That gave me the chip lead, and a few hands later I won another huge pot with AA vs KQ all in pre, adding to my chip lead. Then I just started raising every single hand, busted two more players and went into the final table with 11.3 million. 2nd place had 3.3 million and everyone else was under 2.5 million.

At the final table I continued to raise a ton and put pressure on the shorter stacks. Eventually we got down to 4 handed with me having about 60% of the chips in play. It took forever for someone to bust out though. I kept doubling up the short stacks, then stealing constantly and beating them back down, then doubling them up again, etc. But at long last it was down to heads up, with me holding an 18 million to 11 million chip lead over Misclick, who was the only other good player at the final table. I chipped away at him and took the lead when he tried to run a bluff into my top pair. Then I shoved 11 BBs with 86 and got there against his K9 for the win.

It feels awesome to win, I've made several deep runs in this tournament over the last couple weeks but wasn't able to break though. It's such a massive field you need a lot of luck and need to dodge a lot of landmines, so it's great that the stars aligned for me. The first time I played this tournament two years ago(back when I was terrible) I got 2nd, and I had no appreciation at the time of just how tough it is to beat out that many people, even though most of them are very weak players. Thanks for pauliec84, rc33, lj and lucko for the rail.

Thanks for reading,

George