Paradise Freemillion

[SteveM]

I'm new to satellite tourneys and wanted to ask if what I experienced at the Paradise Freemillion is normal. The top finishers win a seat to the $ Million tourney in August. The tourney seemd normal until it got to the last 5 or 10 people to be knocked out. At that point each of the remaining tables basically played as teams, with each person taking the max time and then folding to the blinds (even if the blinds were all-in), hoping that people at other tables would be knocked out first. It took forever for the last few people to go (had to have both blinds be all-in and the right person had to lose). At a few tables there was open discussion of hands, begging for folds, even plans hatched to "save" people who looked vulnerable, etc. Since there was no incentive to be first instead of 30th I guess the big stacks were worried about looking like A-holes when they should have been putting people away. Anyway, I was surprised by this. Should I have been or is this typical? I guess if you play the Freemillion you should plan to be there a while. And in case you're wondering, no, I wasn't the knocked out at the end (but could have been). I advanced [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].