You certainly did very well there Damian....
Your story reminded me of a hand I was involved in around the same time that some may have picked up on the feed from Tighty, but as memory serves it went like this.
The first 2 levels on table 1 were a bit of a frenzy with the locals seemingly unable or unwilling to play for the required 10/12 hours to make day 2. We had large exchanges of chips prior to this hand.
I"m in the SB and have qs qh, with the blinds at 50/100.
UTG raises to 425. It folds round to the very active local in the cut-off who insta raises to 1475. It folds to me.
Hmmm I think, how to play this. I have 14.5k, the initial raiser has 8k behind and the re-raiser 7k behind at this point. If I ship, I assume at least one will call me given their records thus far and the chips in the middle and if I lose I"m down to 6k, but if I ship and win I"m on my way.
I assume that neither have to be as strong as AK given their previous play but could of course have me crushed so I elect to raise to 3400 to see what happens.
UTG insta shoves All-In and the cut-off almost gets his chips in before he does with another All-In.
Well I guess I found my answer, so I smile, say "I fold" and flip the Q"s to a gasp from the rest of the table.
UTG has kh ks and the cut-off has :as: ah
Flop is
:
: turn
and the river qd
I laugh, UTG leaves and the cut-off flops into his chair, shaking his head, and then shakes my hand.
I slightly happier story that Damians, but none the less exciting.