Leaving the tight side of the force

[greenstack]

I played my very first hand of poker one year ago... I was insta-hooked. When I tried NLHE MTT's I decided I wanted to become a really good tournament player, nothing new I'm sure.

I read the HoH's, ToP and Phil Gordon books plus several articles as I sailed from zero experience and $50 on Stars.

After 6 months of hard work and +200 donkaments, things gradually improved but I never got outstanding results.

I know... I'm in the micro range (I guess things change drastically with higher buy-ins) and my sample is too small but I was managing to keep me ITM 30%-35% on massive fields with ups and downs on my BR but still no need to reload.

The problem was that I never got deep with good stack, most of the time I was just struggling to survive, forget about FT...

After regularly reading 2+2 posts I came to the conclusion that I was playing too tight. Maybe I was too much influenced by HoH or I wasn't fully understanding the concepts of aggressive play.

I think 2+2'ers message is clear, if I want to get to the FT's I have to loosen and take chances.

So I started to loosen... and things improved, my ITM % shrinked but now, sometimes, I go deep with good ammo.

However, it's not easy to change gears and I'm faced with tough decisions all the time, when to take chances ??? it's too early/too late ? on the bubble ? is this really +EV ?

Any help on that matter for loosening a very tight player will be appreciated.

As an example, this is a hand I would have played totally different before... and I'm still not sure if it was a good move.

Stars 45 players MTT, 12 remain/7 paid. Villain shoved twice, with AKs and AQo and has been pushing the table. I'm stealing blinds and winning some pots shoving post-flop when I think there's weakness.

Poker Stars
No Limit Holdem Tournament
Blinds: t100/t200
(Ante: t25)
5 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: t10731
CO: t6338
Button: t2500
SB: t6599
Hero: t4590

Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is BB with 9[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 9[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]
UTG folds, <font color="#cc0000">CO raises to t400</font>, 2 folds, <font color="#cc0000">Hero raises all-in t4565</font>, CO calls t4165 <font color="aaaaaa">(pot was t5190)</font>.

Thank you.