Yes he finished 2nd. Did you even watch him play it out?
I watched him from 4 tables to the end. Until the final table I thought he was a great big-stack player. He was huge over everyone else, and he kept putting people to the test over, and over, and over again. Nearly everytime a small to mid stack entered the pot he'd push in over them. They would fold and he would usually show small to mid suited connecters. Then just when someone had enough and played back, he'd have a big hand. It was brilliant and he steamrolled through the field reaching the FT with over 1M when average was about 200K.
He continued this at the FT. The payouts were rising at $10K a spot, and so no one wanted to play back at him. It worked brilliantly till they were down to 4 and he had 1.8M. But then he was unable to back it down a notch. He didn't seem to catch on to the fact that his opponents were now in spots where they had to pick a hand and make a stand. Where his FE was huge for so long, it was now almost non-existent. Yet he still continued to end up all-in with sub-par hands over and over again. Even at the end heads-up he comes over the top of a raise with K8 when by now anyone watching including his opponent would expect him to do just that.
Instead of this ramble, I guess I could have summed it up as such. His entire game was based on putting his opponents to the test preflop for all their chips. He was fairly good at picking hands that were live if he was called, but he definitely seemed to realize that the amount of money involved was causing people to play a whole lot tighter than they normally would. In a $20 buy-in he wouldn't have come close to the final table before he was looked up. Had he been able to tone it down when they got down to 4, and actually play some post-flop poker, he prob would have an extra $100K in his bank account right now.
Party isn't rigged. You got very unlucky against a guy who believed he could push anyone off of any hand.
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