A number to ignore

The tournament lobby window of the PokerStars client offers a wealth of information. Here's what I find most useful:

- number of entries
- total prize pool 
- number of players still alive in the tournament
- number of paid places
- number of minutes remaining in the late registration period
- my current stack
- my current place
- size of largest stack
- size of smallest stack

There's one number included, however, which should simply be ignored:

- size of average stack

This is the total chips in play divided by the number of players still alive in the tournament. It's an artificial construct with little to no bearing on reality. I used to obsess about comparing my current stack to the average stack, but that's a fool's game. As I've come to realize, the size of the average stack is an essentially meaningless number. It tells you nothing about the sizes of actual stacks, which is what you really need to know. Thankfully, the lobby provides that information as well.

style flavor buy_in entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE   174000 26000       6      95   24    15   429000

delta: $229,000
MTT NLHE balance: $19,421,668
2020 balance: $12,199,343
balance: $74,007,353