Important Chapter Poll! Please read and respond

Hey all!  As I continue to write this chapter, the chapter continues to grow.  It's over 11,000 words now, and, by my (admittedly bad) estimate, I now think the low end for final word count will be 17000.  On the high end, we might be looking at the new record for longest chapter (current record, 20,939 words).

I feel guilty for making you wait so long as it is, so the idea of making you wait a lot longer is even worse.  And let's be real, at the rate the writing is going, the first draft for a 20k-word chapter wouldn't be ready for editing until like next week at the earliest.  Then there's the editing process.  The longer the chapter, the longer it takes to edit as well (2 5k-word chapters take less time to edit in total than 1 10k-word chapter because of scheduling).  Then there's the matter of the upcoming vacation.  I plan to write during that time (lots of traveling time for writing) but I have to focus at least some of my time on cleaning and preparing.

With all that in mind, I'm considering breaking this behemoth chapter into pieces.  It would let me get you at least the first part of the chapter pretty soon.  The issue is that I know how much a lot of you love big chapters, as well as the question of how many pieces to break it into.  I've decided that you all deserve to decide this, since you're the ones waiting.

Options:

1. 3 pieces - initial short opening (~4k words, already written) that comes out soon, middle section (8k-10k words, 20% already written), then end section (~6k words, 70% already written).  Fastest release schedule, possibly worst flow due to breaks.

2. 2 pieces - initial short opening (~4k words, already written) that comes out soon, then the rest of the chapter.  You get a chapter soon but then there's going to be more of a wait, though the flow will possibly be better.

3. just the 1 chapter.  Will take a while but might read best?

I'm leaning towards 3 pieces, personally, but I think you as the readers deserve to have the final say on what you want here.  So pick something below!