If It Was Real: 140-Game Report

It's time for another report card on how our live tournaments are going. In a word -- streaky. We've recently seemed to get hot for a few nights in a row, then cold the same way. Who wants to explain why that happens?

But in our last 20 live tournaments, we've made NINE final tables -- not far from half of them! And we've finished in the top five on five occasions. We had two second-place finishes, a fourth, a fifth and a tie for fifth.

Using the scoring and potential prize pool we started long ago based on a Kansas City area casino, here's how it would look:

BUY-INS: 140 nights x $50 = $7,000

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

Second - 6 ($2,400)

Third -- 6 ($1,800)

Fourth - 7 ($1,400)
TIES for fourth:
3 two-way ($450)
1 three-way ($67)

Fifth -- 9 ($900)
TIE for fifth: 3 ($150)

TOTAL -- 40 for $9,617

A $1,000 investment in the last 20 games would have returned $1,150. Not much, we thought -- until we calculated that's a 15 percent return in about two months of action. Overall, our profit since June 2007 is down to 37.4%.