What goes up

I finally fell off the ladder. On Step2 (on the way down from 4 and 5) I finished 7th and out. It was a meek ending.

The final sequence was 1-2-1-2-3-3-4-3-3-4-5-5-4-2-out.

One remarkable thing is how much Pokerstars raked out of this run. On the one hand, of course, I only put in $7.50 so I cannot have lost any more than that (and of the $7.50, supposedly only $0.50 was rake to begin with).

However, each step of the ladder is raked and you can buy directly into each step, so the rake is real even if I did not personally contribute it.

The rake-ladder would look like this:

$0.50 - $2 - $0.5 - $2 - $7 - $7 - $15 - $7 - $7 - $15 - $30 - $30 - $15 - $2

So I contributed $140 in rake during this ultimately unsuccessful attempt.

Now I am out, I am really ruing my misfortune at not making it thru Step5 when I was in the chip lead. I do not think there is anything I could have done differently, so no regrets, but still the question "what if ?".