The big final

So I played the $100k final on the weekend. In fact, it was 130 players for a $130k prize fund. My first tournament at a really serious level. It was a deepstacked tournament - 10000 chips with 45 minute levels, so also pretty slow going. I was prepared to play pretty tight, solid poker for the early stages.

I did pretty well early on, winning a couple of decent pots to go to around 13000. From there it was treading water for a long time. I didn't see a lot of playable cards, and when I did get playable starting hands I nearly always missed the flop. When the blinds got bigger, I made a few bluffs but a couple of times I ran into big hands and had to give it up.

There was one old guy on our table who was just playing insane poker. On one hand I saw him call huge bets on the flop and turn, and check the river. He had a bad ace high against top pair jacks and hit his ace on the river - the other guy was furious. He very frequently played any two cards to a raise preflop and played passively postflop whether he had hit or not. Despite the atrocious play, he was chipleader on our table for most of the day.

In the end it was the old bloke who put me out. He limped in middle position along with the SB when I was on the BB. I raised for about half of my smallish stack (about 3x the blind at this point), holding A4 suited. Flop was J99, check-check. Turn was a small card giving me a flush draw and I move all-in. Guy shows J7 offsuit, and my outs don't show. I think I played it right, and was just unlucky that he hit his rags.

Overall, I played seven and a half 45 minute levels, for maybe 240 hands or so. Summary of the cards I saw:

Pocket pairs: KK (raised, no callers), JJ (won on an A high flop), TT (raised, no callers), 99 (made a boat and took a big pot), 66 (limped, no set), 44 (limped, no set), 33 (folded preflop), 22 (folded preflop).
Decent starting hands: AKs (raised, no callers), AKo (raised, no callers), AQox2 (one time raised and folded to a massive reraise, another time missed the flop and folded to a big bet), AJs (won on A high flop), AT once or twice, can't remember what happened, A9s (nut flush on river, small pot since it was early).

Flushes: one, straights: none, full houses: one, sets: none, trips: none, two pair: none, top-pair-top-kicker: none..

I think that's a bit of a dry run for over six hours of play...