There were 78 players and i finished a respectable 17th when contesting a 21,000 pot with the average 13,000 , i had KK !

I had a very good start , first my AK hit a K 2 2 flop and when another K fell on the turn we were all in , he had KJ and the K had saved him but i rivered an A to take it all , then i had AKs v JJ of John Falconer who rereraised me all in preflop , i hit a K , and finally i reraised preflop and was flat called by the raiser , flop was K K 2 , both checked , turn T , he checked and i bet pot , he called , river a 7 , he checked and i bet 4600 , he called having slow played AA and didn't believe i had a K !

With the average about 5000 , i had 14000 but there were still 66 players and a long way to go .

A short stack raised and i found my first real pair KK , i reraised to 2800 , he called all in for 1800 and a limper showed AJ and passed , the all in had AT and rivered an A , at least it was cheap .

The last hand before dinner i yet again had AK and raised , one player reraised all in with 44 , i called , it was the same player who held QT against me in the €200 No Limit when i also had AK yesterday , this time i got lucky and rivered an A .

After dinner i went card dead but could afford to wait , i lost one pot on the button with J9s on a 9 high flop against the SB all in for 3000 , he had Q9 . I then had TT and raised , the button called , flop was K 6 2 with two spades , both checked , turn was a Q , both checked , river a 5 , i checked and he bet 2000 , my gut feeling was he had a Q , i pulled the Q out from the flop and flipped up my TT , out of respect for a good read he showed the Q !

I managed my stack between 10,000 and 14,000 when with the blinds up to 500 1000 and the average around 14,000 i found my second pair of Kings , i raised to 3500 , all passed to the chip leader in the SB , he had approx 30,000 and asked how much more i had , this normally indicates he intends to raise or if calling wants to know what the next bet could cost , i told him i had 6600 left and he called , i knew he had a decent hand , not AA KK or AK but at least TT or AQs , flop was Q 9 7 rainbow , he now bet 2000 , this meant either he had TT or JJ and wanted to know where he was rather than have to call an all in , or he had AQ and didn't want to give a free card and to see if i would raise or of course he has flopped a set , if this was the WSOP final or i was in the last 4/5 of a major event i may have considered the action that had taken place and if certain it was a set pass , but this was a €540 event with only 9 getting paid and if he didn't have a set i could win a 21,000 pot making me one of the chip leaders , i reraised my last 4600 all in and he called and flipped up his set of Queens !

The outcome would of course had been the same if he reraised preflop which in my opinion he should have done , he had me outchipped 3-1 and by flat calling was giving the BB over 3-1 to call .

Had my KK stood up i am sure i would have made the final as there were a lot of short stacks and this level would have knocked out at least 6 or 7 players .

No matter how well you play , these sort of hands will often occur , in this players case beating my KK with his QQ will probably be regarded as his key hand should he go on to win , i took it gracefully , tapped the table and said nice hand good luck everyone .

Something experience has taught me is that i no longer worry if i take a beat , what matters is that i played my best and it is certain that as long as i continue to do so in the long term i will be a winner .