Tournament selection no-no

If you choose to enter a tournament which is nearing the end of its late registration period, you're very likely choosing wrong. Playing tournaments is hard enough without making things harder on yourself. The problem with joining a tournament late is that you're automatically one of the short stacks, and have less time to grow your stack. You'll often be priced out of hands by the bigger stacks. Things can get pretty desperate pretty quickly; you can find yourself out of the tournament in a New York minute. Last night, I joined two of four tournaments I played late, and paid a heavy price - I hit the rail quickly in both. What's worse, they were $50,000 BI+EF ones. I'm making a new poker vow, which is to pass on tournaments with less than half their late registration period remaining.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       6    19      97   24     -        0
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    46     475  114   175        0
MTT   NLHE    45000  5000       6     9     101   24     -        0
MTT   NLHE    17500  2500       6    86     424  114    41    57100

delta: $-82,900
MTT NLHE balance: $2,579,148
2017 balance: $501,125
balance: $11,918,955