Won a tournament!

I woke up in time to just make it to the morning $60 buy-in No-Limit tournament at Muckleshoot Casino. There were about 40 players and the tournament started at 10:30 A.M.

I won it.

I had almost all the chips, though I did agree to a chop within a chop.

They normally only pay 4 places in this tournament. When there were 6 people, we agreed to give everybody $200 out of the price pool, regardless of what position they went out in. Then first place would pay an additional $300 and 2nd place would pay $100.

I did play well. I avoided playing suited K10, in two different situations I used to do without thinking much about it. In either case I would have been knocked out of the tournament had I played that hand.

There is one noteworthy hand that caused me to win the tournament. We were down to 5 players and the blinds were 1K & 2K.

I had about 12K and was the 2nd lowest chip count. I was in seat 1 on the small blind.

Seat 7 raised it to 4k of his 8k in chips. Seat 8 raised it to 6K which to me, based on his previous play was an obvious attempt to steal it with a non-premium hand or he would have gone all-in.

I thought about it for quite awhile and believed he was on a King high to do that.

I went all-in for my 12K with my A5 suited. The big blind right behind me, started to call by throwing in a handful of 1k chips across the line. He then froze up with fear and said I thought the bet was only 6K not 12K and pulled his chips back out of the pot.

The tournament director was actually dealing to give a dealer a break at the time. I glanced at him and he looked back at me. Technically, if a player objects, to that breach of the rules, that player is forced to put in his chips and call the bet.

I held my mouth shut. The tournament dealer continued to look at me and I said nothing.

He then proceed on with dealing the hand. He cannot call the foul. He can only enforce it when another player points it out. I did not want him in, and I was not about to force him into playing.

The hand was played out. An Ace came on the flop. I won it with a single pair of Aces with my weak little 5 kicker. The big blind, the player, who had retracted his bet was in anguish. He had an A10 and he believed I must have had a bigger kicker then him to play it that strong.
The tournament director told him and I the real play of the day was when I didn’t say anything and let him retract his chips.

He said a lot of players immediately react to something like that and say he has to put his chips in. My nice guy image, deceived the player, and offered a reasonable reason for my not objecting to him, removing his chips, out of the pot, after he had thrown them in.

I then was able to use my big stack to bully the table and knock two others out, which gave me the mammoth chip lead.

I was willing to split the pot, and possibly make a $100 less then I might have, because I am a nice guy. However the real reason I agreed to chop at the end is, because I know anything can happen in a poker game regardless of how many chips you are ahead.