Online challenge - update 5 and live game plans

Now this starts to get scary. I hadn't played another of my 90-player-sng's since last week due to time restrictions and some illnes early this week. So I was happy to be able to play another $20+2 last night.

I got decent cards but unfortunately I couldn't find anything on the flops and my stack was reduced to half quite early. At the 40/80 level I was shortstacked with less than 1,500 chips and went all-in with JTs on the button. The SB with about 3,000 chips total was my only caller with A5s. Down to a race wich was decided by a Jack on the flop. After that I got a nice speech from him about being a moron, donk and whatever for going all-in with that hand. The other players discussed with him the reason why his call was horrible but he didn't get it. I decided to stay away from that discussion. About 10 minutes later he had to leave us due to a lack of remaining chips.

At this time there had been about 80 players left. Down to 18 players left I didn't get much playable and started to be on life support for most of the time. I went all-in for about 10 times with those marginal to good playable hands and never ever got a caller. The players at the FullTilt SnG's use Sharkscope quite often and its very interesting how the information there changes the behavior of some opponents. The little shark next to my name and the skyrising graph look very nice. ;-)

Unfortunately picking up the blinds helped to survive but still left me on life support. Good thing I got two callers later down to 12 players and tripled up. Still not in comfort-zone my stack shrinked again as we had a very long fight around the bubble. Finally went all-in with AK if I remember it correctly and got called by a shortstack with QJ ... and the final table (and the money) was there.

During the final table my stack was at least big enough to wisely decide which hands to play or fold. Some shortstacks got busted, I took down some pots with decent cards and aggresive raises and we were down to three player. Here it went back and forth for a long time. Everybody was shortstacked and chipleader at least once in that time. I survived this hand: I had QK, raised and got called by the chipleader. Flop was QKJ. I went all-in and got called immediately by AT. Damn, he got his straight. Turn was blank and the river a Q! A lucky full house for lucky Shadow! This player got later busted in third position. I went all-in against the chipleader with AQs. He had KJ, called and a King decided the game.

This was my toughest SnG so far. It took 4 hours an 13 minutes and due to the bad condition my chip-stack had through almost all of the middle period of the tournament making a 2nd place (for a 2nd time in a row on this tournament type) this is a extremly good result. Of course as always there's some luck involved (e.g. my full house vs. a made straight) but making the final table and even making it down to the last five players was mainly a result of good strategic decisions on my side (or bad ones on the opponents side). So yes, I am in general satisfied with the way I played this particular tournament.

My stats are now up to
$27.19 per hour (from $20.15).
ITM 47.37%
FT 36.84%
WIN 10.53%

My live game planes have to be changed somewhat. As far as I know the €800 Freezout in Bregenz on March 2nd is sold out. That's bad news as I would have loved to play in Bregenz again. So my next possible option seems to be the €500 Deep-Stack in Vienna (CCC). 5 hour trip to Vienna instead of 90 minutes to Bregenz, phew! The tournament sounds very interesting but I don't know yet for sure if I can make it.