IMHO, ITM is a decent guide but doesn't really tell you much about a player's ROI. Deep payouts reduce the prize pool on the FT and are designed to get a lot of players their buy-in back but shooting for the FT is always my goal. Playing in a lot of these because they increase your ITM is kinda pointless. Because you can be ITM but not even get your buy-in back. I really don't like playing the deep payouts because even if you get to the FT a lot of the prize money has been spread so thin, it's really a waste of time. These are good for practicing some new strategies and improving your game by applying your studies to see what works for you. I have about a 5-8% FT ratio with an overall ITM of around 17-21%, depending on how I'm running. Another thing to consider is field size. I like a lot of heads-up and 3-way tournaments, so a 60% or better ITM is a must, or you're going to be negative ROI. Good practice for when you get to the final 3. FT is my goal, but the top 6 is the place to be if you want your ROI to really start going up. If you're going to have a decent ROI making this range in tournaments should be the goal. I have 2 top 3 finishes and 4 final tables with one chop in my last 35 tournaments. In the end, it's all about ROI.
Consider this: You're buying into $3k guaranteed tournament for $15 1st is $1100, second is $800, and third is $590. If you hit 3rd place, you get 39 buy-ins. So you have to hit that spot 1 in 39 or 3.6% of the time to break even if we ignore ITM. If you can get to 2nd you get 53 buy-ins and so on. The approach to tournaments is to hit these goals more often than the minimum break-even combined with a decent ITM. This is where ITM comes in. So if you can FT 1-25 or 4% of the time or 4 times out of 100 tournaments, the likelihood you will make money drastically increases. This is where we start to look at ITM. The more often you hit ITM to reach this goal, the more you make when you do FT. So if your ITM 15-20% of the time and FT 3-4% of the time, your ROI should be decent. To me, reaching ITM is the last resort to recover my buy-in, but the real goal is to get to the FT. I get KO'ed often on the bubble because I'm not playing to make ITM. I'm playing to get to the FT. Don't get me wrong, I'm not foolish, hitting ITM is an important long-term goal, but I'm not folding a top 9% hand because I want to make ITM when near the bubble and close to going out. This can also depend greatly on who's at the table and their style.
If you make ITM the goal, it's likely your going to be going out often near the bubble or just above it. If you make the FT your goal, your ROI will increase. This, of course, all depends on how good a player you are. Today's players are usually pretty good compared to 10 or 20 years ago.
Also, remember that if you are in the US, the government is going to steal nearly half your winnings, reducing your overall ROI by around 42% to 50% in Fed and State Taxes.
