Of course ROI counts. If you consistently win tournaments here it means you are better than most of your opponents. Just over a year ago I was down to less than 10 million chips, but today I am just a tad short of 250 million, and all bar a couple of million are from MTTs.
Yes, I did once win a 5-million chip entry tournament for 50 million chips and came 2nd in another for 30 million chips, but that is still only 80 million chips.
So how did I come by the rest? I made them the old-fashioned way, I stole them by playing in MTTs and deceiving my opponents about my hands enough to win many 1-million chip buy, in tournaments. I don’t know how many I have won, but in my last 10 tournaments I had two wins, a 2nd place, and a 6th place. But in the rest I bombed out far away from the money. It will always go like that. Sometimes you hit a streak of good fortune, and sometimes not, but in the long run, if you are better than other players you will win more tournaments, place more often, and win more chips.
With that A8 offsuit hand, you could start a tournament aggressively, flop an Ace to pair yours, shove your stack, get called by a player with AK and another with a pair of 77s, then river an 8 and undeservedly treble your stack. From this point on you are in a great position to win the whole thing if you play well.
Having trebled your stack, you can now play supertight for the next half hour and only play premium hands in large pots, and you should build a very good position.
On the other hand, you could get your just desserts, and you are out early.
The question you should be asking yourself in MTTs is how often do you get into a good position so that you have one of the leading stacks at the end of the first hour? Yes, you CAN play small stack poker and sometimes you WILL win, but on the whole you need a lot of luck to pull it off if every time you go into a pot you face potential elimination by a bigger stack if you try to call a bluff that turns out to be a value bet.
I think what you need for MTTs is to set yourself landmarks. Where do you want to be at 30 minutes, at one hour, at 90 minutes, and so on.
One thing I know for sure is that you can often win the biggest pots with bluffs, once you have identified the nervous nellies who will not call of their whole stack when you have floated a pot sized bet on the flop and then shoved the turn from out of position. Of course sometimes these moves fail, and you go out, but often they can turn a fading stack into an aggressive power on your table.
Don’t think in terms of hands, think in terms of stack warfare.
