Sounds good, but i cannot make it work

[tjankus]

Hi all,

I've started playing cheap MTTs recently, read a lot of posts and found some strategies that i cannot get to work for me right.

1. Looseness early in the trny to accumulate chips. What do you guys mean by that? I used to play premium hands only (AA, KK and AK) early in tournaments. You know how it goes - try to double up with AA/KK and fold AK if the flop didn't hit you. As you may expect it all ends 60-90 minutes later in the middle stages when i'm average to short stacked and gotta make some weird moves like pushing AQ after 2 limpers. The waste of time. I thought widening the range early would help, but how far should the widening go? If i start playing Ax suited and suited connectors, it doesn't seem to help much, as these good looking cards doesn't come too often too. I then added Kx suited and some other garbage to my range and started paying overly aggressive post flop - have no doubt i can bet a pot on the flop, then pot on the turn (which means going allin most of the time) and get called by the villain holding a bottom pair. You cannot bluff them out no matter how hard you try. And the draw doesn't hit often enough.

So, should i play any trash just to fold it on the flop unless i hit a miracle? What about draws, lets say a flush draw with a single overcard i am sure would win if i hit it? Should i call the flop and fold the turn (2/3 to pot sized bets)?

2. Stealing blinds in the middle stages. This sounds like a sentence from a science fiction book. I do not know if you play $100+ buyin MTTs, but playing buyins up to $30 the blind stealing is impossible to achieve. There are 2-3 limpers every single hand before the action comes to late position. How on earth do you steal that? So i get something like AQ when there are 12BB left in front of me and i push just because raising 3-4BB would put me in a terrible situation and i have no time left to wait for a better hand. More often than not one of the limpers calls to show his AA/KK/QQ/AK.

I know the best strategy against overly loose opponents is being TAG, but it's so hard to play all the tournament being short stacked and desperate for double ups. These cards just don't come too often.

Any thoughts about what i do wrong or misunderstand?