On Monday night after busting out of the 20 rebuy at Pokerstars I signed up just in time to play the 50 PL holdem tourney at 10pm that has 196 players. Now I like pot limit holdem and Omaha a lot, in fact PL Holdem is probably my best game as it allows a player to see more flops and I feel I have a distinct advantage over most players post flop. So anyway the tournament starts harmless enough and I'm down to around 1300 from the 1500 starting level when a key hand arose at the 25/50 level. I'm on the BB and an UTG player raise to 150 it goes fold around to the SB who calls and I'm the BB looking at 100 more with 66. I call looking to spike the set and nothing more. The flop comes 996...BOOM! SB checks, I check raisor bets 150, SB calls(does he have a 9?) and I call. Turn is a harmless 7 and both the SB and I check and the raisor bets out 250, SB min raises(he does have a 9!) and I reraise all in for 500 more. Beleive it or not the raisor moves all in over the top of me for another 1000 and the SB calls quick as a cat. The hands flipped up are 9 8 for the SB and 88 for the the raisor??? The river was a blank and I tripled up to 3900. The next 20 mins before the first break I make a few more hands and drag a few more pots and I was sitting comfortably at 4800 at the break. Very few hands to discuss over the next hour as I won a few and lost a few and ended the 2nd break at a little over 5k still in pretty good shape with about 60 players left. This is where all the action started as i was moved to an aggressive table with a couple of big stacks. Early on at this table I was getting no cards and let my stack dwindle to about 2400 while getting run over by the aggressive players at the table. I simply had nothing to work with and couldnt fight back until I picked up AA UTG at the 200/400 level. With the aggressiveness at the table I decided that it would look fishy to limp in so I decided to make a preflop raise to 1200 hoping one of the big stacks would say what the hay only can hurt me for 2400 and push me in. Well that's exactly what happened and when he turned over AJc I doubled through to a little over 5k. I was able to steal a few blinds and win a showdown when i flopped trips and suddenly i was up over 8k at the 300/600 level. This is where I made my move as I picked up AK and reraised a pot raise from a smallish stacked raisor putting him all in for 4500 and he called with AQ and didnt spike a Q. So now I'm at 12,500 and amongst the top 5 in chips with about 30 left when another key hand came up. I'm in early position with AA at the 400/800 level and do a min raise to 1600 it goes fold around to the button who has 6500 and he pot reraises me practically all in and i of course put him all in and he flipped up AK v.s my AA and no miracles occured and i'm now at 20k or so. This is where I feel my game is improving i used to be a awful big stack and would lose my chips to people coming over the top of my preflop raises. Now I'm just putting it in overdrive and picking the right spots against weakish players and staying away from raising in positions where an aggressive player could come over the top of me. So with this big stack i've now bullied my way up to 26k or so and we're down to 20 players with a few players hanging on to make the money. This is a great situation for a big stack and I cant stress this enough that you have to just come out hammering when your 7 and 6 handed and there's 2 or 3 smallish stacks at your table who are just trying to make the money. It's free chips you should be able to steal easily if you stay away from the blinds of the bigger stacks, and if you do get played back at you know you need to fold because they are strong. Well i did just this and piled on the chips at the 600/1200 level all the way up to 34k until we made the money. After the money i calmed down and traded pots with players and hung out between 30 and 38k till we were once again getting short down to 10-11 players. Here I went back to my strategy and picked up more blinds and was at 44k and chipleader when we go to a key hand. There's 10 players left and I have a smallish stack directly to my left who i have been abusing for some time now. Well I'm on the BB with 89o and he min raises to 2400(he had a 12k stack) UTG and its all fold to me and I call hoping to break him with a nice flop. Well the flop comes 9s Js 8c and I check and he bets out 3500 I move him all in with the check raise and he ponders and calls. I expect to see a hand like AA/KK or maybe even AK due to his pause but he turns over something i did not want to see As 10s giving him four 7's, 4 J's and 7 spades for 15 outs. The turn was a red 3 and the river was a Q...and now i'm down to 32k. Two hands later with blinds moved up to 1k/2k there's a limper and I pick up AQs on the button and raise to 10k and everyone folds as I pick up the 5k and move to 37k and to the final table. At the final table I'm in 3rd place to start but there's only 2 short stacks and everyone else is between 20k and 50k. A couple of people bust early and I bust one of them with AK v.s 88 and I move my stack back up to around 48k as we are down to 7. I go card dead and I have an aggressive big stack to my right stealing at every opportunity and I dwindle down to the low 30's as a few more players bust out and we are now 4 handed and it looks like this: Aggressive Player(player A): 72k Solid unaggressive Player (Player SUP): 55k Good Player (GP): 38k Me: 33k 4th pays $700ish, 3rd $ 1200ish, 2nd $2k, 1st $3k The play goes a like this a lot of raising of my blinds from player A, GP playing back at player A with big hands, and me stealing any chance i get v.s SUP. This goes on for about 30 mins before I reraise player A's raise on my BB and he calls with K9 off V.s My AQ and I flop an A and take the 58k pot. Then SUP gets into a confrontation with GP and he's knocked out in 4th. So now we're down to 3 and the stacks are roughly 105k for GP 88k for Player A and 55k for me. Right away Player A comes firing at my blind as he pots it to 22k and I reraise all in and he mucks. Very next hand he tries it again and I fly over the top of him one more time and he mucks so now I'm at over 100k and he's down to 40k or so. A few hand later he makes the same raise on me and I move him all in and he calls we flip over A10 for me and A4 for him but he flops a 4 and now i'm back down to 60k. Finally GP takes out Player A and now i'm a outchipped roughly 220k to 55k as we are heads up. First hand I picked up a pot with a raise and then 2nd hand i got KQ and GP raised and I reraised him all in and he called and flipped over K9 and my hand held up so i doubled up and trailed only 160k to 115k. A few hand passed and then this hand came up GP min raise on the button and I called with K9. The flop came 9 6 4 rainbow. GP checked and I bet 40k he called the turn was a K giving me 2 pair. He checked and i bet all in and he called flipping up a very well played KK and I was out in 2nd taking home $2k! Overall i was very happy with my play I switched gears very well being aggressive at time and slowing down to a rock pace at others. I never panicked which i easily could have with player A raising my blinds literally every time while I hit a cold deck. Hey I didnt win but I played well and battled all night and in the game of poker 2nd still pays pretty well.

Source: MuckMuck's Poker Journey