I do carry a Mak, with 9 rounds of the hot Russian 9x18 JHP. I could carry a KelTec P11, with 11 rounds of Speer Gold Dot 9mm Luger. But I am much more accurate with the Makarov at all ranges, and accurate follow up shots are faster too. I do NOT find shooting the P11 to be at all pleasant, and so have a hard time going through a lot of practice rounds, whereas I enjoy shooting the Mak until I run out of ammunition. As a result, I am much more confident that the Mak will do the job if necessary, even if I give up a few foot pounds of energy doing so.
BTW, my experience with Mak reliability also has been outstanding. I have been able to make it fail, when downloading rounds to see how soft a shooter I could make it and still have it cycle. On my guns, with 21# recoil springs, I've found that everything still works down to about 650fps (with a 93g lead bullet), and as you go below that there will be failures to lock open when empty and, eventually, failure to cycle. But with any "normal" ammuntion, dead nuts reliability.