Tournament report card

Counting the nine tournaments I entered yesterday, I've now played in 77 sit and gos. That's a big enough sample to get an idea if I'll be able to make a profit over the long haul. Here's the number of times I've finished in each place, along with the corresponding percentage:

place count(*) count(*) / 77

    1       14        0.1818
    2       13        0.1688
    3       13        0.1688
    4       16        0.2078
    5        8        0.1039
    6       13        0.1688

The way the tournaments are set up, you essentially break even if you win one out of every six tournaments, and also come in second one out of every six. So to make a profit, you want both your first place winning percentage and your second place winning percentage to be slightly more than 1 / 6, or .1667. As you can see, I've just managed that so far.

One of the things I'm noticing about playing for bigger stakes is that no matter how big the stakes are, if you play at that level regularly, it becomes second nature and not at all scary. Given that fact, you lose all appetite for playing for smaller stakes. The smallest buy in I'd ever consider for a tournament is $50,000, and even that feels really tiny.

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 80000      1000           6        98     1   312000
150000      1250           6        53     2   315000
 80000      1000           6        15     6        0
 80000      1000           6        25     3        0
 80000      1000           6         4     6        0
150000      1250           6        28     4        0
150000      1250           6        37     5        0
200000      1500           6         2     6        0
150000      1250           6        89     1   585000

delta: $81,500
balance: $5,162,821