I just picked up Arnold's book. Chapter 28 is called "How Much Money Do You Need." In this chapter he has a chart showing his results for the first 75 tournaments he played in. The average buy-in was $70 for a total investment of $5250. He cashed 14 times at an average of $1200. Of the 14 cashes he says that 5 were substantial. I think he is talking about 1st, 2nd, or 3rd as that is where the bulk of the money is.
Before the boom I remember top notch tournament pros talking about the expectation on their buy-ins. Most put it between 200% and 400%, with Phil Hellmuth, of course, putting his expectation at 500% to 600%. Arnold's cashes totaled to $16,800. That's a 320% return on investment. He then moved up to bigger buy-in tournaments.
He was selective of the tournaments he played in, looking for the right structures. With an expectation of 320% then juice from 18% to 25% is no big deal. If I had it to do over again I would've bought his book when it came out in 2006. I would've studied it for awhile then jumped into those tournaments to see what I could do.
