[trumpman84]

There is this live Saturday tournament I go to that has anywhere from 10-20 players on one or two tables. With the exception of maybe 2-3 good players and maybe 3-4 decent ones, the rest of the players are terrible, calling preflop all-ins with stuff like J9o, JTo and K9o. While, I'm a decent tournament player, I do horribly at this tournament, not finishing in the money in 5 tries.

I just cannot win tournaments when people don't know when to ditch a hand and when you almost can never steal blinds if the big blind picks up a halfway decent hand. With the blinds at 250/500, and my stack at 5750 (we start with 7500), I moved all-in from the button with AJo just wanting to pick up the blinds and got called by the joker in the big blind with K9 soooooted. I only went all-in here because the big blind was the loosest player I'd ever seen...I'd only seen him lay down maybe 10% of his hands preflop...all the rest he'd called 2k raises with to see the flop with stuff like Q8o and J9o..so I knew I'd be either called by a worse hand, or god forbid, he lay it down, and I didn't have enough chips to try to steal his blind with a standard raise, then let him catch when I know I had a better hand than he did. So, you'd think an all in for 1/3 of his chips would be enough.

I know, I know..you want to be called by worse hands...well, when I'm a 65% favorite with all my chips on the line just 2 or 3 times in a tournament, I'm an underdog to stay alive.

How is it possible to beat this tournament full of fish and people who barely understand basic concepts of the game?