I can't finish 1st for the life of me

[1C5]

Just variance or some kind of shitty leak? Feel like I am playing better yet the results are not showing it.

My 1st 500 games looked like this: (not great but not that bad)
17.6 ROI, 39.8 ITM. ($11 buy in)
1st 12.0% 60
2nd 13.8% 69
3rd 14.0% 70
4th 16.8% 84
5th 16.4% 82
6th 13.2% 66
7th 7.0% 35
8th 4.0% 20
9th 2.0% 10
10th 0.8% 4


Now this is my last 618 games, same buy in, 12.7 ROI, 40% ITM.

1st 10.2% 63
2nd 13.4% 83
3rd 16.3% 101
4th 14.9% 92
5th 16.5% 102
6th 12.0% 74
7th 9.1% 56
8th 4.4% 27
9th 2.1% 13
10th 1.1% 7

Insanely bad. Any guesses on why I am getting so few 1sts?

[citanul]

i'm gonna go with variance mostly here, since we're looking at like, a chaneg of 5-10 individual results over 600 games from 3rds to 1sts would have moved your ROI hugely. i doubt, though can't be sure, that your game in the money and 4 handed has gotten worse by some good margin in the last little while. you made money, that's what really matters. even winning players are going to have losing 500 tournament blocks.

interestingly, usually the first thing i look for when i look at a block over block sample like this is if the person is busting out less often in 7th-10th. usually this will be apparent if a player has been playing too carefully early on in the tournaments, and not getting it in with the idiots and occasionally getting sucked out on. not only did you bust out more often earlier in the tournaments in this new block, but your itm was higher. this leads me mostly to believe you're just going through a bit of a rough itm streak.

it might be that your rough stretch influenced you to play more carefully 3-5 handed, or that other things did, prompting you to get a few more itm places, but prompting you also to often enter the money shorter. only you can really know this by honestly looking over a whole stack of games from their 5 or 6 handed points on.

citanul

[suited_ace]

It could be just variance, it could be you missing a few +EV opportunities 5-2 handed.

FWIW, I'd check out if I'm not losing those opportunities. ICM is the best way to go, but posting hands that you didn't push and were in doubt about also help a lot.