Disappointed with tourney payout vs. effort

First of all, this isn't a criticism of the site where I played, but rather what I'm considering to be a lesson learned.

Last night I played a $1 buy-in MTT at PokerStars. There were 1,572 entrants. I fought my way through 99% of the field and wound up 10th. Terrific, right? Well, that was after 4-3/4 hours of play, and I walked away with a whopping $11.32 (net $10.22 after the buy-in). That's just over two bucks an hour... not an outstanding hourly rate by any means.

I could look at it as time invested in skill-building, which is how I've been categorizing most of my play since I started, but I think I'm at the point where I'm looking for a bit more return on my investment. I've heard criticism of Stars' new 20% tournament payout structure and I guess this is why. It's nice to be able to make the money more easily, but it kind of sucks to do so well yet gain so little.

I was the short stack at the end (just over 80,000 chips when blinds were 8,000 and 16,000) and I made a somewhat loose all-in call hoping to get lucky, but didn't. Probably could have hung in and jumped up to the next pay level (around $20) if I'd exercised a bit more patience, but I'd lost enough chips on the previous few hands that I was getting a little frustrated, plus I knew I had to make a stand somewhere or risk losing even more chips with crap hands when the blinds came around again.

So, two personal lessons learned here:

1) Don't bother with $1 buy-in tourneys unless there's a good guaranteed prize pool.
2) Think twice about making loose calls for all your chips, even when short-stacked.

Mostly I just wanted to vent a little about putting in all that time and effort for a lousy ten bucks! Better than a kick in the head, though, I know....

Yer the big money in tournys tends to be in the 1-3 places.

I tend to stick to cash games on the whole though, the varience is a lot lower.

I know what you mean. That's why I never enter any tournies under $3 buy-in. At least if you make the final table in a $3 tourney you are usually making over min-wage

I play in a ton of those at Stars at all money levels and it's like Grum said the top is where the money is. Look at it this way, once you make final table the money gets better quickly.

I think you are looking a this the wrong way.

Firstly, well done on placing where you did. That in itself is pretty impressive.

Secondly, you invested $1 to make $11. That represents around a 900% return. Maybe it took 3-4 hours but the % return is MASSIVE. What do you want for $1?

Keep up the good play, move up the ladder and eventually the actual dollars will be good.

Hi

I love them lucky $1 MTT, however my $1 not been so lucky so far, or is that my play?

Thanks, guys.

Schatzdog, that's a very good point about the percentage of return on my $1 investment. I suppose I just like to maximize what I can do with my time if I'm doing something that has the potential for profit, and after I'd been doing well for most of the game (was hovering at around 5th in chips for a good long while just before my decline near the end), I was a bit frustrated that I didn't climb a little higher up the pay scale.

It's certainly better to gain a little than to lose a lot!

Besides, you could have spent all that time and won nothing! It's not a bad cash prize (if you don't want it, I'll take it) and the effort wasn't wasted.

You may consider 2.00 an hour low return. But what you are not taking in to account is the 4 hours, eliminating 99% of the other players and the experience you received in the 4 hours which to me is priceless. Good job on making the final table..............Rock