[Silent A]

Hi. I mostly play PLO cash games but I like to dabble in the occasional NLHE tourney. I've done OK and am definitely up $ but I feel like I'm doing something wrong (or more likely, not doing something right).

The main thing that I've noticed is that I'm very rarely at or near the chip lead. My typical tournament consists of me slowly growing my stack by stealing some blinds and picking off desperate shortstacks/overaggressive LAGs. Usually, this means I sit close to the average stack for almost the entire tournament - right up to the FT, if I make it.

Then I read about people who win three MTTs in one day and I can't help but wonder how can people consistently get big stacks given how easy it is to have your pocket Kings get busted by Ax, especially when you consider how shortstacked online tourney's get - it's not like you can actually play 3 streets of poker very often once it becomes an all-in fest after a couple hours.

I have to suspect that these guys either play a tonne of tourneys a day (how many is typical? - I have no idea), are pushing very marginal/-EV edges early, or are just highly skilled at pushing people off superior hands pre/post flop.

Also, I've noticed is that I get my money in with the better hand far more often than not, which suggests that I'm not being aggressive enough with more marginal holdings or that I'm simply not stealing/re-stealing/defending enough - actually, it's safe to say that I almost never try to re-steal. How important is the re-steal for building stacks?

Finally, I'd be interested to know how often a good player can expect to final table and win a typical, say, 500 player tourney (some of you make it sound like you expect to FT 10% of these). My sample size is so small (given the insane varaiance) that it's really difficult to gage how I'm doing. Going over my recent results, in the last 300, or so, tourneys I've played in with 100+ entrants I've FT'd 7 times (field sizes = 3000, 1000, 1000, 700, 500, 150, 100 - last 3 are actually Omaha tourneys) and won none.