Better late than never

Vegas TR - Short Trip
Got in late thursday night, checked into Imperial Palace and tried to get a quick nap in, ended up watching the Office for a few minutes and heading out to Venetian to get some food and play some cards. I ordered from the room service menu and entered a $130 single table sat that paid two seats in the following day's Deep Stack Event. I was exhausted after a long work week and little sleep...needless to say I played like crap and the cards didn't bail me out. Busted in 4th and went back to get some sleep.
Woke up relatively early and made my way to the Wynn. It was pretty slow and they only had a couple 2-5 games going but I got seated relatively quickly. I played pretty conservatively TAG and made my way from 1k to $2500 pretty quickly. Then I started playing a lot more hands and getting involved with a couple other bigger stacks at the table. My stack fluctuated between 2500 and 3500 for the next couple hours until my buddy Danny arrived. He got seated in the same game and we started getting a few drinks in us. My play loosened up further and the table followed suit, it was looking like a good chance I could use this image to bust a big stack. My best opportunity came when I flopped the nut straight with 6-9, got lots of money in on the flop, check raised the villain all in on the turn and he folded what he said was the lower straight. In hindsight my raise was a pretty big overbet and I might have gotten called if I had raised his $200 to $600 instead of $950 but I put him on a set and he was the gambling type, oh well. My loose play got me in trouble as I proceeded to double up every short stack at the table. I 3-bet after a straddle and a bunch of calls, short stack goes all-in and I called with AQclubs, lose to AA. By the end of the night I had pissed away over half of my winnings and ended up leaving with $800 profit.
Danny didn't fare as well and got sucked out on a few times for big pots. We ended up leaving early (cheaper than another night at IP) and heading back to San Diego to enjoy the beautiful weather (and record-setting heat).
Sunday night was the final Tourney in the year-long pokeer league my boss runs. I was in 3rd and needed to hold off the 4th and 5th place players to win one of three seats in the June 13th WSOP $1500 event. The buy-in was $100 with $50 going to the nighly prize pool and the other $50 going to the WSOP pool. 13 players played, and after drawing for seats I found myself at the same table as the two players I needed to outlast. Our table was very quiet and focused, I could tell the other two were being very conservative. Neither of them have played in the WSOP and I think I have more poker experience than they do by a long shot. Because we had only 6 players at our table I thought I could be a bit more aggressive than usual and started trying to steal blinds a bit in the early stages. I stole a couple times with a min-raise, then it stopped working. The next time I opened Elise (5th place in standings) would call, she bet the flop and forced me to fold and check-raised my c-bet the next time I tried it. She is normally a very tight player and I was suprised to see how active she was this early. I concluded she was either getting good hands or was playing much better than I expected, I think both were true. Mike (4th place), stayed away from me for the first hour or so, but got a lot of chips off of two other players at the table. When we got down to 10 players and one table I was a bit shorter in chips than the other two, but none of us were short yet. At the final table I didn't play a hand for three orbits until a very interesting one came up.
Danny was directly on my right, he was getting shorter in chip and the blinds were 200-400 with a 50 ante, he had ~4500 in chips. I had 8000ish. The big blind had ~2200, and Danny asked how many chips he had before acting. Danny (UTG+1) opens for 2000. I was next to act with AK offsuit, my read was that Danny would only do this with a pair and most likely JJ or QQ. I did not want to risk half my stack if I was behind in the hand, at this stage with the two players I needed to beat still in with avg chip stacks; I couldn't afford to get too low. I folded, the big blind went all-in with 66 and danny called with 9-8os...wtf? He said I was just trying to make a move, want to win the tourney, blah blah. He hit a 9 (I would have won with a pair of Ks, oh well). I was a bit confused to say the least, I guess he thought the short stack would fold most hands in that spot.
The next hand I played was the make-or-break hand for the tourney for me and Elise (5th). I'm in the cut-off with Q-4s, folds to me I raise to 1200, Elise calls from the small blind. I put her on a pretty big hand, thinking she would fold Ax and maybe even a low pair here. Flop came out 2 3 5 rainbow, Elise checked. We both had 7150 left in our stacks, the pot was ~3000+. I had seen Elise check call all the way to the river and check the river with a straight earlier, so I wasn't really afraid of the check-raise. I bet 1500 hoping to take it down, she tanked for about 30sec. I talked to her a bit mentioning that she probably had 10-10 or JJ, she raised to 3500. This really surprised me, but now I was 100% certain she had an overpair. The pot was now laying me 4-1, but this was almost half of my remaining chips. I decided that my Q might also be an out, and planned to fold if I missed and try to survive with my remaining 3600chips. I called, the turn brought a 10 and she checked. I took the free card and hit the 6 on the river for the straight, she checked again and I went all in. My straight was well disguised and I can't blame her for calling with QQ there, but I doubled up and knocked out one of my rivals at the same time. I think her inexperience killed her in this hand, if she raised all in on the flop or shoved the turn I'd have no choice but to fold. The way it played out I didn't have to get my whole stack in when I was at risk of elimination.
I built my stack up to ~10k chips (out of 65k total chips), and stayed out of trouble waiting for an opportunity to take out Mike and secure my 3rd place in the standings. Mike was playing super tight and ended up getting pretty low in chips, he pushed for about 3k with AQ when the blinds were 400-800 and doubled through the big stack on my right. His 7k chip stack got down to around 3k again he got it all in with AKos vs J9diamonds, flop was 89Q two diamonds, 10d on the turn made the straight flush and my competition was out. He shook my hand and said good luck in Vegas. I could tell he was really upset about it, he is a good player but he let himself get too short and got unlucky.
After that hand was over we were down to 4 players, with the top 3 getting paid. Three of us were at ~10k and Jeff had around 30k on my right. I eliminated the shorter stack (TIM) who also secured a spot in the WSOP tourney, then got in a no-brainer hand with Maddog Mike. I had KJ in the bb 3-handed, stack was 20kish. Maddog raised to 3k (he had ~9k behind), Jeff folded and I called. Flop was 46K, I checked, he shoved I called he showed something like 95suited and said good game. Going into heads-up I was a slight chip leader. Jeff had been very aggressive playing a great big-stack strategy most of the night, I had been playing very tight until the last 30min or so. I started stealing every one of his bb and c-betting every tie he called and managed to get a 3-1 chip lead while never playing a big pot. I got him all in when I called his shove with middle pair, he had no draw but caught runner-runner straight on the board for a chop. Surprisingly I dont really remember the last hand, but I busted Jeff for my first win in this league all year. During our match Jeff said I was killing him heads-up, and complained about being card dead. I think I have played more heads-up than him and even just my basic aggressive strategy was hard for him to adjust to. If he is not the aggressor early in a hand he has a hard time playing anything but the nuts.
I'm pretty disappointed it took me this long to get a win, but it came at the right time with a WSOP seat on the line and double buy-in meant first place money ($390) was more than usual.