A Solid Tourney run

Just finished 15th out of 213 in a $10+1 Tourney on FullTilt. It's my best finish in a Tourney (aside from 30 player SnG's, one of which I actually won once) and I'm still not satisfied. I played pretty well most of the way, but didn't get much in the way of cards. Had KK twice, but that was about it. I never saw in AK, or any other big pair besides the Cowboys. I had 99 twice I think, and had to fold them pre-flop once. I got lucky once for all my chips and unlucky twice for all of someone else's chips. The lucky hand, I raised pre-flop with KcQc, and got called by the BB. Couldn't really put him on a hand here, so when the flop came AKx with one club, and he checked, I figured my hand was probably good and bet the pot. This was probably my biggest mistake in the hand, because it cost me half my stack and pretty much pot-committed me. He then check-raised all-in, and the way it shook out, I was getting about 3-1 odds to call off my whole stack, probably drawing to 5 outs and a backdoor flush. If I folded my M would be in the red zone at a pretty early point in the tourney, so I decided to call. He turned over AJ and I rivered a K to win the pot. Like I said, I got lucky there, but I think in the end I made the right call based on the pot odds and the remaining stack I would have had.

I also had two hands where I had someone else all-in against me and they sucked out, and those both hurt. Early on, I called a shortstack all-in along with two other people with 88 in my hand and made kind of a donk bet into a dry sidepot, on the turn which got the other two to fold. I guess it actually wasn't that bad of a play because I figured I had a decent shot of being good against the all-in player and wanted to protect my hand against the other two. It worked b/c the all-in player turned over A6 and there was no A on the board. Unfortunately he hit one on the river and that hurt a little bit, but it didn't really cripple me. The other tough one was when a shortstack pushed in the middle stages of the tourney and I made an isolation raise all-in with AJ. He turned over QJ, but caught a Q on the turn to suck out.

All in all, I think I played a pretty good tourney. Only made 10 bucks, but I feel like I played pretty well and have gained some confidence in my tourney game.