Winning Tournaments

I  do not try to win tournaments. You almost always lose dice when you try to win a tournament. If you don't lose dice, the best case scenario is usually breaking even and the worst case scenario is running out of dice. I don't play monopoly to break even. Therefore, I rarely care about first or second place in a tournament. I do sometimes care about third place, because you sometimes get purple packs for that. 

I do, however, care about getting resources out of a tournament, and this can create the illusion that I am trying to win it, as I coincidentally take first place. 

Tournaments rarely, if ever, yield enough rewards to pay for the dice rolls. I see them as vehicles to support the main event. Therefore, I rarely, if ever, try to get rewards from a tournament on its own merits alone. I try to pair the tournaments with rewards in the main event (the top event), and have the tournament help pay for the rolls I am spending on the main event. 

Also note that early in the main event and tournaments, they will often return more than they cost. However, later, near the middle and the end, the rewards become "inverted" and they cost more than they return in dice. The reason one would keep going is to get the more valuable sticker packs we find near the end of main events. Whether it makes sense to go for those is a judgement call.