[Ixnert]

I've been playing low buy-in STTs for a few months now, but just recently (in the last week or two) started seriously playing MTTs, also low buy-in -- usually the 15s or 20s that Party has every few hours.

Early play seems pretty simple -- play mostly conservatively, wait for big hands, play speculative hands here and there when position and action allow. Playing just pretty basic poker, I've been making the money nearly every tournament (though, of course, my sample size is tiny).

But once it gets down to the last 50-75 and the blinds are climbing, I start feeling lost. I'm almost always a middle stack, don't feel like I can keep waiting for big hands, but I've more often than not got a much bigger stack in the couple of spots behind me, which seems to make too much stealing unwise. I feel like there's another gear I should be switching into, but I'm having trouble locating it.

Should I not be as afraid of stealing from bigger stacks? Be playing more aggressively earlier so that I get to the late stages with a bigger stack (or not at all)? Or is this stage of the tournament, with most stacks with 10-20 BBs or so, just awkward for everyone?

(If there's a FAQ for stuff like this, feel free to point me at it -- I looked but didn't find much.)