The mysterious disappearing opponent

As I've mentioned before, I got into the habit of doing a fair amount of web surfing while playing in my cash game days. When I first started playing sit and go tournaments, I sharply curtailed this practice, believing I needed to pay full attention to everything that was happening at the table, even when I wasn't involved in a hand. Slowly, I've slid back into my old patterns, as I've come to realize that one can do quite well without paying much attention to the hands one isn't involved in. One interesting side effect of this is the phenomenon of the mysterious disappearing opponent. It's often the case that I'll discover that the number of players has diminished by one, or even two, all unbeknownst to me as I was happily surfing. It's a nice surprise, but almost makes me feel a little guilty; someone else did all the work of getting rid of those players, and I get to share the benefit of their absence without even knowing how they hit the felt :-)

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 50000       800           6        57     2   105000
 50000       800           6        36     3        0
 50000       800           6        33     2   105000

delta: $57,600
tournament balance: $1,271,090
balance: $6,401,821