Completely agree. If you are playing for profit, you need to focus on your ROI and nothing else. And ROI is made up of both small and big cashes, so saying that only the win matter, or only mincashing matter, is obviously wrong. They both matter, so you need to play in a way, where you dont overly sacrifice one for the other. The only exception would be big events like WSOP main events. Nobody would have remembered Cris Moneymaker, if he came second.
How much a min-cash matter, will depend on the tournament structure though. The best way to look at it is by determining, how much of the price pool is already distributed, when players are in the money. At one extreme end we have satellites or DoNs, where its 100%, and obviously in these events we only focus on min-cashing, because nothing else is possible. Even a novice can understand that.
But if we take a format like a 9-man SnG, then the bubble is also very important, because when it burst, 60% of the pricepool is already distributed (50/30/20 payout). The remaining 3 players are now only playing for the last 40%, so how often you end up among those remaining 3 players is obviously going to be of critical importance to your results.
At the other end of the spectrum we find something like PokerStars 180 man SnGs, where only 17,5% of the pricepool is distributed at the bubble. Min-cashing is these events is far less important than in 9-mans, so it makes more sense to adopt an aggressive "go strong or go home" approach. In between we find something like the MTTs at 888 Poker, where often around 30% of the pricepool is distributed at the bubble.
