Just say no to guarantees

"Guarantees" is my shorthand for multi-table tournaments which have a guaranteed prize pool. I do my best not to play them, but sometimes my desire to play poker exceeds my will to avoid bad tournaments, and that happened again last night; the guarantee was the second of the three tournaments I played. Guarantees are bad tournaments. Why? For the simple reason that they require you to outlast a larger percentage of the entrants in order to make the money. The tournaments that are good for me on PokerStars typically require outlasting anywhere from 71%  to 76% of the entrants in order to make the money. The guarantees on PokerStars require outlasting anywhere from 81% to 86% of the entrants in order to make the money. That's too rich for my blood. The only guarantee about guarantees is that I'll be guaranteed to lose money hand over fist if I continue to play them :-)

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     233   63   169        0
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     226   39    41        0
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     315   81   181        0

delta: $-150,000
2024 balance: $3,091,000
2024 blue distance: $171,000
balance: $15,900,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.52 (1220 of 2938)