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Seems like you played well. Definitely take this insight with a "grain of salt" as I don't have any experience as the chip leader in a big NL HL tourney.

You wrote:

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After this hand, most players would shut down when near the bubble, but David (whatever previous posters might say) is a fearless and extremely intelligent player.

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I'm sure you realized this so excuse me for repeating the obvious but there's no reason I can think of for David Williams would be concerned about not making any money in the tourney. Winning the tournament is his only concern I would think.

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1. under what conditions (if any) might limping pre-flop be correct if you are the chip leader on the bubble and have aggressive players to your left? I didn;t ever limp, but I can see some good arguments for it.

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It sometimes discourages players from raising with marginal raising hands for heads up situations as opposed to playing a pot 3-way, 4-way or more.

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3. here is an actual hand. i complete the small blind with K4 spades. David checks the BB. flop is 345rainbow. I check-raise to 14k, then he makes it 40k (and claims A2). how else might i have played it?

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Notice how Ace anything fits into this flop. I mean what's his biggest concern when you checkraise? I would think a set but maybe he figured you'd be coming in raising with a pair pre-flop.

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5. last actual hand.
at this point david williams owns me.
he is now one of the chip leaders and i'm down to 90k.
i open for 6k in the 1-2 round, he raises to 18k, i FOLD QQ. he shows AK and says he would call. i believe him. at this point there were 29 players left (27 paid, 20 go to tournament of champions). all guidance is appreciated.

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Why not call the raise and see the flop?

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It looks good that I went out with QQ against KK in a seven-handed
game, but the fact of the matter is that if I had played correctly I
should have either a) had a large chip stack at the point (70k + x ,
instead of 57k) or b) gone out much earlier with a hand like 78-suited
against a player who called my all-in re-raise.
A re-raise all-in at that stage aims to take down the pot and
increase your stack by 11400 (SB+BB+ante+initial raise). The only
things that should matter are:
1) what hands are you representing
2) what can your opponent call you with
3) given that he calls you, what is your chance of winning
AK, in most instances, can't call, but if they do they are 57% against
56-suited and 44% against QQ. against AA or KK, you are better off
with 56-suited (and many, many other hands) than with QQ.
Bottom line: I played my cards instead of my opponents, and
therefore didn't play aggressively enough in the 3rd day.


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Yeah I think this is basically it. I will say that if not making any money was a big concern then tighten up a lot. Yeah you'll blind off a fair amount of chips but you probably will have a threatening stack by the time everyone is in the money. With that said, when your not that worried about being shut out of the money, against a player like David Williams you're going to have to gamble because he's forcing you to do so. IMO you can't play cat and mouse with this type of player, gamble but gamble intelligently.