What the deal with winning?

Its so hard to understand it. Playing in a 20 table MTT, I think statistaically, I am going to get my money in bad at least once. In this tournament, I got my money in bad twice. The first of which crippled me. After that I "chased average" for over an hour before 22 held up vs. JJ and AT to triple me up. (To be fair, I got the money in first, and got 2 unexpected callers.) From there, I kept getting big stacks to call me from behind. Sometime WAY behind. Why? At one point, there were 14 left and I was 3rd.

But alas, I got caught up in a hand where I felt I had to blow the escape pod. I lost a good amount of chips, and limped into the final table. But even so, I had 20k and the chip leader on 55k. The blinds are 500/1000/50 and surprisingly, a push with AT was called by the BB (who had just 1000 invested) for 22k with 86o. Why he takes this risk I don't know, but an 8 seals my fate at 9th. Again, called from behind by a bigger stack.

I cant for the life of me think to why a player in 3rd or 4th would take this risk at the final table as the caller. 40% of their chips on the chance of getting lucky as a dog. I understand KOD theory that he thinks I might be panicked, but he is a dog to almost any holding here (even a steal) and is far from a panic situation. Not mad, just surprised.

In non-poker news (NFL) news:

The Lions go 2-0. But the story behind the story is how the Vikings were even in this game. It's 10-0 and the Vikings look awful. On 3rd and short, they AGAIN decide to pass and throw a ball that bounces at the receivers feet and into his hands. Inexplicably, the ref calls a completion. The Vikings, in a heads-up move to defeat instant replay, simply run up to the line and spike the ball. In doing so, they take away any challenge that the Lions can make and render the instant replay a non-factor.

Obviously this was
a) Not the intent of instant replay. Its not supposed to be a trick, like bouncing a pass off a ref. It was to fix bad calls. Certainly not to insure them.

and more importantly,

b) this is NOT the intended purpose of the quick-spike. That rule was put in to make game ending drives more exciting while protecting the QB against an unnecessary hit because they had to get out of the pockek to to throw the ball away to stop the clock. It was NOT meant to be a defeat of instant replay!!! Shame on you Vikings.

Someone in the NFL rules committee needs to fix this. You should not be able to spike the ball to avoid a red flag.

The Lions go on to win anyway, despite 5 turnovers and a starting QB who only played 2 quarters. The Vikings looked awful. Just awful.