Ridiculous ladder up

I got back into the blue last night in a big way, and in rather a ridiculous fashion. When the final table of nine players began, I was in seventh place, with just 6.29% of the chips in play. When it came down to six handed play, I was in sixth place, with just 2.63% of the chips in play. When it came down to five handed play, I was in fifth place, with just .16% of the chips in play. When it came down to four handed play, I was in fourth place, with just .58% of the chips in play. Finally, when it came down to three handed play, I was in third place, with just .36% of the chips in play. That's as far as I got. Now that's what I call laddering up :-) There's no way I could have done this without the active participation of my opponents. I should have ended up in sixth place at best; all they had to do was silently collude to make constant small bets which wouldn't affect their stacks materially, but which would force me to go all in to stay in a hand. My 2.63% of the chips would not have been long for the world, and they would all have guaranteed themselves a slightly bigger payday. However, they failed to do this. Even worse, some of them committed the cardinal sin no big stack should ever commit in this situation - they went all in against a bigger stack. Not just one opponent did this, and hit the rail. Not just two. Fully three opponents did. By virtue of this foolish behavior, I made $1,458,000 more in profit than I had any reason to expect. I understand why they did it, however. They were playing to win it all, not to ladder up. That's completely honorable, if somewhat misguided. I had no illusion that I could ever win it all, so I was more than happy to ladder up :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT-R NLHE    43500  6500       9   116      59   12     3  2332000

delta: $2,232,000
MTT with rebuys NLHE balance: $23,619,500
2017 balance: $24,225,455
balance: $35,643,285