Less is more

I had another slave wages experience last night. I hit the 95th percentile, but only made a small profit, getting just 1.26% of the prize pool. That got me wondering how that 95th percentile finish stacked up against all my other such finishes. As it turned out, it had the 6th worst prize pool percentage. The worst was .43% and the best was a whopping 18.5%. Looking at the numbers, I discovered an interesting fact - the fewer the number of entries, the greater the prize pool percentage. A fine illustration of the old adage that less is more :-)

 style flavor buy_in entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       9     237   54    10   134000

delta: $84,000
MTT NLHE balance: $9,003,668
2020 balance: $1,981,343
balance: $63,789,353

Less is more

One of the annoying things about the PokerStars lobby is that the maximum buy in for a table isn't apparent until you're in the process of joining a table. If you only want to join a table with a particular max buy in, you're reduced to trial and error. Last night, after a couple of false starts, I decided to settle for a table with a $20,000 max buy in, instead of my usual $40,000. Luckily for me, it turned out to be a case of less is more :-) I ended up tripling my starting stack. I'm not sure if this result had anything to do with the change in max buy in, but I can't rule out the possibility. I don't think I played any differently, but perhaps my opponents did. Just for fun, and to gather additional information, tonight I'll specifically try to join a $20,000 max buy in table.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 39 hands and saw flop:
 - 5 out of 6 times while in big blind (83%)
 - 0 out of 6 times while in small blind (0%)
 - 12 out of 27 times in other positions (44%)
 - a total of 17 out of 39 (43%)
 Pots won at showdown - 5 of 7 (71%)
 Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $40,115
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,763,879
balance: $7,120,832