OK now you got me interested. Let's talk about the dreaded subject of tournamet payouts.

Let's do clear lake and delta only and compare NG v. WON v. AC. Let's add a reasonable amount of expenses. We'll go back a few years so that the size of the field is averaged out. We don't know what the field sizes will be for next year but there's been big fields and small fields in the last 4 years so it's not a terrible estimate. Since we don't know how many people got in the options and what the exact payback percentages are and such, this is just a basic way to compare.

Let's look at 2 things

1. The percentage of people who made their money back after a reasonable amount of expenses
2. The ratio of your entry fee to the 1st place prize money

Here's some calculations to see what percentage of the field made their money back. The first number is the number of guys who broke even or better. The second number is the field size. The third number is the percentage of guys who broke even or better.

NG - I'll assume anyone who made a top 50 check (8 to 10k) made their money back.
2009 Clear Lake - 29/89 - 32.6%
2008 Delta - 50/191 - 26.1%
2007 Clear Lake - 50/196 - 25.5%

Avg - 28.1%

AC - I'll assume anyone who made $1,000 made their money back
2009 Clear Lake - 11/68 - 16.2%
2007 Delta - 9/81 - 11.1%
2006 Delta - 15/76 - 19.7

Avg = 15.6%

WON - I'll assume anyone who made $1,000 made their money back.
2008 Clear Lake - 14/137 - 10.2%
2007 Clear Lake - 11/111 - 9.9%
2006 Clear Lake - 11/76 - 14.5%

Avg = 11.3%

Now let's take those same events and look at a ratio of entry fee to 1st place prize. When a boat is the first prize it gets squirrely right :) but let's just say the cert could get you $23,000

NG
2009 Clear Lake - 105000/4400 - 23.8
2008 Delta - 125000/4000 - 31.25
2007 Clear Lake - 125000/4000 - 31.25

Avg = 28.76

AC
2009 Clear Lake - 11675/400 - 29.18
2007 Clear Lake - 23000/400 - 57.5
2006 Delta - 23000/400 - 57.5

Avg = 48.06

WON
2008 Clear Lake - 23000/500 - 46.0
2007 Clear Lake - 24,500/500 - 49.0
2006 Clear Lake - 21,080/500 - 42.16

Avg = 49.55

What have we learned here team?

If you are interested in making your money back, FLW is your best odds. If you want to get a fat payback for first place relative to your entry fee, WON and AC should be your choice. Sure there's gray area and my numbers above are not some perfect accumulation of all the data, but that's the gist of it.

The funny thing about tournament fisherman mentality is that when we're in the truck driving home at the end of the last day we always want whatever portion of the payback we got to be higher. If we win, we want 1st place to be worth more. If we make the last check, we want the last check to be bigger. If we were just out of the money, we wish the event paid further down in to the field. If we were no where close to a check, we wish there was some luck option and that we'd won it.

True??? I think it is. The org's try to serve this thing up every which way, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Quick, someone yell at me and tell me I didn't take the TOC in to consideration :P