another strong 500k tourney

Finished in 180th place. I'll admit it, I got lucky to get there, then had a string of poor cards. Three straight orbits without raking a pot, while doubling up a couple of short stacks eats away at your stack. I made an interesting decision with 97s that I have to look over. I raised in MP, got reraised a reasonable amount. I was looking at 3-1 odds, 5-1 with the implied odds. This was one of the shortstacks I doubled up earlier when I raised him AI with 9Ts, and he had since picked up a few hands to build his stack up to respectability.

I weighed my options and decided that with the odds the way they were, I could call here and either push a very good flop or check/fold. I figured his range for this reraise wasn't completely restrictive, it could be pretty wide. A fold was certainly the safe play, but I was playing to win this thing, and with the range of hands I had him on, I certainly think my play is defensible.

Long story short, I called, pushed on the AQx, two diamond flop, he miraculously called with AA and I did not hit my flush, though he didn't fill up, either. The next hand, I pushed with just over 2BB with KTo, and ran into aces again.

I'm going to have to think about this 97 hand some more. I think clearly two things were at work here: One, I was antsy because I'd gone three orbits without raking in a pot, and we were at the point of the tournament where that takes about 40% of your stack. If I had recently taken down a pot or two, I would have thrown the 97 away because I would not have felt the need to take one down. Secondly, I think that my decision to go after the big money is correct. Now, does that mean I take these extremely marginal edges, or do I leave discretion for the better part of valor, and try to find more solid edges? The question about that, then, is what if I don't even find an edge as marginal as this one that will enable me to get to 100K?

This is what I'll be mulling in my head tonight and tomorrow.