Playing it safe in low blinds in small stakes games

[nulli]

It’s not my intention of this post to be a whine – although I feel like it! Apologies for the length the questions are at the end of the post.

Up until recently I’ve been a winning player although I would probably class myself as competent rather than very good. I moved to poker stars recently from another poker room as the one I was playing in was quiet, (up until now I’ve had reasonably good results) I’ve been entering $5 SNG’s with a starting bankroll of $200 with a view to moving up when the bankroll was large enough.
I had a great run at first increasing my bankroll to $250 in a around 5 games, however I have now endured a massive losing streak.

Since my initial success I have failed to make the money 32 times out of 45 games, needless to say my bankroll is looking pretty bad.
Here are my results,

1st x3, 2nd x8, 3rd x13, 4th x13, 4+ x28

As you can see it’s quite shocking. I am bubbling most of the time, and if I do make the money I’m in 3rd mostly.

So what’s going wrong? Apart from the most obvious reason (that I’m a losing player and need to improve my skills!) I have come to the conclusion that my playing style just does not fit in with the way the $5 games are being played. It appears that the very aggressive players are walking all over me.

I went through my results using PT and looked at the games in which I came 4th and worked out what percentage my stack was, on the bubble I am more often than not the short stack with 16% of the chips, 2100 of the 13500 in play.
I have read a few books in the last year s The 3 Harrington Books and recently Sit N Go Strategy by Colin Moshman, both authors advocate a tight, aggressive but cautious approach to low blinds (10-20 15-30 25-50) playing Premium hands strongly, playing Medium pocket pairs with caution and speculative hands when the conditions are correct. (Ie good position, limpers in front, no LAGS behind) I’ve adopted this strategy and this is where I think I am failing.

This is my typical SNG experience... my 1500 starting stack gets blinded down to 1300 throw in a few speculative hands and medium PP’s here and there and its 1200 I win a couple of hands with AK or AQ or something similar and I’m up to 1800-2000,(although sometimes it’s the other way around and I’m down to 800) the players are gradually reduced as the ‘maniacs’ knock each other out, it’s usually after and All In with hands like J9s vs QT all in on a K93 flop..
The rest of maniacs and other less competent players gradually get knocked out at around level 4 or 5 and that leaves me nursing a small stack (the one I started with because I’ve played 15% of my hands) with 3 other ‘maniacs’ with 4000 3000 3000, they continue their relentless barrage of raises and re-raises until I’m forced to push all in and hope for the best.

I have gone from being confident of at least breaking even to presuming the worst every time I play.


So my questions are.

Are these ‘maniacs’ really maniacs or are they actually playing better poker given the conditions than me?

Is the prescribed cautious play setting me up for failure as we enter the mid to high blinds when I am forced to push A9 into the aggressive players who’s calling range appears to be wider than my pushing range?

Am I just a bad player!? - Given my results I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that!

Thanks in advance.