Clarification on early MTT strategy

I have a hard time gathering chips early in a tournament. It seems at best, if I am still in with 1/5 the remaining field, I may have at best, an average stack. Usually though, I'm pretty shortstacked.

I want to develop a get-chips-or-bust-early attitude but am having trouble executing. I know its hard to generalize, but how are some ways of doing this. Risks (never sure if the 'risk' I'm taking is foolish or not)? Catch someone with AK who missed their flop? Limp with cheap blinds? All these seem fine until its actually tournament time, then I have trouble. Is there any insight that I am missing? Thanks and I'll be back in about 3 hours.

[gobboboy]

I've been working on a new strategy in the micros that seems to work fairly well. Here are some big points:

1. Limp in with a LOT of suited cards until you get to 50/100 blinds, sometimes 25/50 if your chip accumulation hasn't been going well. I may look fishy, but limping in with cards like 35s, 47s, and T6s has had fairly good results if you play well postflop. Multiway you need to hit your flush, but shorthanded flopping top pair may be good enough. Your implied odds early on are ridiculous, making hands like these profitable. In large, multiway pots I also try to limp in with hands like K4s and other high card-rag suiteds. Do not be afraid to call raises with these hands, all it does is make them better heads up. Get out if you don't flop anything, but otherwise you will make far more than you lose. Oftentimes I've pushed with bottom pair against a preflop raiser and their AK which dominated me earlier I reverse dominated on the flop. AK unimproved gets shoved a LOT more than it should on the flop.

2) Don't bluff. Dear god, don't bluff. Even the most minor tricks won't work on these people unless you've seen them lay down hands before.

3) Take some risks limping in if you're not sure. Don't cold huge raises with bad hands, and get out if you don't hit the flop hard, but with good play post flop you can extract a lot of chips when you are ahead.

[TheBlueMonster]

There is no definitive answer to this. You need to adjust your tournament strategy according to the way your table is playing at the time. You can't pigeon-hole yourself into one strategy; it'll screw you.
Example: you managed to accumulate a nice stack early by catching hands against LAGs overplaying their hands. You then get moved to a really tight table. Slowplaying/letting them bet their hands won't get you as much chips.

[TheBlueMonster]

[ QUOTE ]
2) Don't bluff. Dear god, don't bluff. Even the most minor tricks won't work on these people unless you've seen them lay down hands before.

[/ QUOTE ]
my correction: don't bluff much. If you have a good read on someone you can bluff them. If not, then stick with actual hands.

[FishInAPhoneBooth]

Adopt a "AK nice tournament." By that I mean don't be afraid to get all your $$$ in when a favorable situation arises. How often are you all-in with something like a pair and a flush draw a la classic Super System?

Probably a major problem with my play early is that I am not aggressive enough. Granted, different situations arise, but if its early in a MTT, it's possible I don't value top pair highly enough. (Does Super System cover this well?)

Here is a hypothetical situation that probably all of you have gone through, but would help to get me starting to think:

Say it is early in the tournament. stacks are about even and i limp in middle position with 7 8 hearts. and the flop comes with two hearts( As Th 2h). i havent committed much to the pot yet, but after i check/call/raise, there is a lot of action behind me and say two people end up all in ahead of me. Its early, no reads, good chance to triple up or get out? Or am i missing something? Sorry if this is a stupid question.

and thanks for responses

I have placed first and had many ITM's in the micro MTT's with my strategy.

When you play these you will notice alot of times, the pots have alot of limpers in them. THere are usually alot of passive players. I suggest you take advantage of this by playing borderline hands on the cheap. Sleeper hands are usually what gave me the most chips early on. For example,i limped with 64s in late position along with 4 other players, flop gave me 2 pair and had an overcard,i checked knowing someone had to have the overcard, and i was right. i was able to double up easy because they did not suspect my hand.

This strategy would work in the higher buy-in MTT's, but its hard to find spots where it is cheap to go in with a hand like this.

I since stopped playing micro MTT's because of the very long time it takes and the little reward in the end, compared to the higher buy-in tourneys. It's good practice nonetheless and gives you a nice rush of confindence.