If it was real: 120-game report

It's been three months since we checked our live tournament performance against what might really happen at a casino. Of course, one recent tournament was real -- a $35 buy-in nightly game in northwest Florida which earned us fourth place and close to $200.

We use a pretend payout matrix based on money for the top five players. (At Ebro Greyhound Park, it actually was four -- but Harrah's in the Kansas City area told us they reward five.) In the last 20 tournaments, we made the final table seven times. But we finished in the top five at SIX of them: third twice, fourth three times (two of them ties) and fifth once.

Here's how the scoreboard breaks down:

BUY-INS: 120 nights x $50 = $6,000

First -- 4 ($2,000)
TIE for first: 1 ($450)

Second - 4 ($1,600)

Third -- 6 ($1,800)

Fourth - 6 ($1,200)
TIES for fourth:
three two-way ($450)
one three-way ($67)

Fifth -- 8 ($800)
TIE for fifth: 2 ($100)

TOTAL -- 35 for $8,467

We're in the top five almost 30 percent of the time -- and our return on buy-ins is still good, at 41.1 percent. That's admittedly down from about 45 percent in our last check. But we still fondly remember the night in October when the real return was 465 percent.