Not to beat a dead poker horse, but....

I got second in a poker tournament last night (which puts me on a bigtime hot streak, and man do I wish this was for money). It was easily the best tournament I've played from beginning to end, but there was easily one hand that stuck out that pretty much made my night.

There were seven of us at the table, and I was in second position with pocket 7's, so I doubled the big blind and got two callers. At this point, I was the big stack with around 16,000 in chips, but the two callers I got were only behind by 1,000 chips or so. Flop comes out King-Queen-7, and I have trip 7's. I'm thinking about how to slow play my 7's when the fella next to me goes all-in for 15,000. It takes me a while to call, because I know I'm sunk if he has Pocket Queens or Kings, but I called, because a set's a set, right? Turns out the other guy goes all-in as well, and we were pretty even in chips as I mentioned, so this was big for all of us. I had them both covered by 1500 chips, so even if I lost, I was still in it. The last caller had the fewest chips to go in, so there were two pots, a side pot of 1,000 chips and a HUGE pot of over 50,000 chips.

Turns out the other guys had a king, one with an ace kicker, and the other with a rag (9 or lower), so I was in control, but a king would sink me. They were both hollering for a king, so I non-chalantly mentioned to the dealer that he could throw out a seven if wanted to. Then he flipped over the turn.

Seven.

I couldn't believe it -- I'd become the tournament chip leader (there were still a couple other tables open) in in hand, and no one on my table had anything close to what I did, so I could pick my battles until we condensed to a final table. I played well up until the end, where I made a couple bad calls, but lasted until I made it to head's up (one-on-one) play when I lost. Honestly, placing that well was a fitting end, and this time my wife was home to celebrate it with me, and that made the perfect ending to a great weekend.