ROI
also called return on investment
ROI is tournament profit expressed as a percentage of the money staked, so an ROI of 20% means every buy in returned an average of 1.2 times what it cost.
It is the tournament equivalent of a win rate and it needs an even larger sample. Results are decided by rare deep runs, so a few hundred tournaments mostly measures whether one of those happened to arrive.
It is also only comparable within a format. Large field events swing far harder than small ones, so the same player can show a much higher ROI in a nine handed sit and go than in a thousand runner tournament while playing exactly as well.
an example
your cards
You play 200 tournaments at 50 plus 5, so 11,000 staked in total, and finish 2,200 ahead. That is an ROI of 20%, and one final table almost certainly accounts for most of it.
This example is made up. The real one is in your own hand history: find roi in your own hands and see how often it came up and what it cost you.
related terms
In the money
To finish in the money is to survive far enough in a tournament to be paid from the prize pool, whatever place you event ...
Win rate
A win rate is the average amount a player wins per unit of play, counted in big blinds per hundred hands in cash games a ...
Variance
Variance is the spread of short term results around the long run average, which is why a run of winning or losing sessio ...
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The full order of play, from the blinds to the showdown.