First of all, I appreciate the kind wishes about my recent good fortune in EMHD events.  Clearly, I was pleased with the results and my overall level of play.  Still, I played 2 large pots where I got my money in way behind late in these tournaments. In both of these pots, I committed large chunks of my chip stack with relatively marginal hands:

EMHD 5. We were down to the final 15-16 players.  I recently had a large double-up through Klinker, and I had a pretty big stack (roughly 40k).  The blinds were 300/600, and Faith raised to 2,500 in late position.  I looked down and saw KJ.  She had about 10k left behind.  Instead of seeing a flop out of position or folding, I opted to put pressure on her and push all in.  She ended up calling with AJ and doubling up, giving her more momentum and giving her an opportunity to eventually chop 1st and 2nd with me.

EMHD 6. We were down to the final 2 tables.  I had been playing aggressively and had recently built a large stack through a fortuitous double kill.  I had roughly 28k in chips and was sitting between Boston Chris and Big Jim S.  The blinds were 200/400 with a 100 chip ante.  The action folded around to Big Jim in the SB.  He raised to 1,200.  I picked up pocket 8′s in the BB and reraised to 3,500.  Jim ended up shoving for 9,000 more.  I thought about it and called off 1/3 of my stack with the 8′s and ran into KK.  Jim doubled up and left me with a medium stack instead of a large stack.

Fortunately for me in both cases, I was able to recover, get lucky, and make significant cashes in both tournaments.  However, I put myself in tough situations with relatively marginal hands in both cases.  In the case of Faith, I made a bad read and assumed that just because I put her all in, she was going to fold.  In the case of Jim, I made a bold play to try to knock him out of the tournament, get only 25 points for the kill, become a monster chip stack, and improve my chances of winning the tournament.  I decided to overlook the negative impact to my stack and the difficulties with being a medium stack at that stage in the tournament.  Given these sizable missteps with speculative hands, I easily could have blown huge opportunities.