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This works in two situations:

1) Bad play by your opponents:

a)Donks are unwilling to fold their TPTK to your trip threes or rag two pair or whatever - this really helps your implied odds but is very dependent on knowing your opponent(s);

b)Just calling a raise in LP makes people leary of PP and when they miss the flop and you fire over their continuation bet or check, it confirms their suspicion that you are holding PP and they will fold allowing you to steal the pot. Necessary skills: Selective Aggression or Sensing Weakness

2) The second reason is much more complicated and I'm not sure how correct I am in my reasoning. Imagine a table where everyone is playing textbook TAG style. Your short term winrate will be very dependent upon the cards you get. You luck into getting aces vs. someone's kings, AK vs. AQ, stuff like that. But over the long run, you'll be on the short end of that stick just as frequently as you're on the winning end. All in all, you'll be break even with these other guys because you're all playing the same style (also assuming mistakes are relatively even). However, if you now throw in the occasional 27o or 58s or whatever, this drastically changes the dynamics of the game. If everyone else is still only playing tight textbook poker, but you've loosened up, you've given yourself an occasional opportunity to win an extra pot - and these few extra pots do add up as long as we are disciplined enough to fold when we know we are beaten. Herein lies the skill of the uber-pro. They, with their seeming telepathic abilities, can play middle pair on a K 4 6 rainbow board and know whether you are holding that king. I can't do this yet, but I sure wish I could.

As applied to tournaments, this strategy will only work well during the early stages when everyone is playing deep stack poker - the deep stacks provide enough of a buffer that if you do manage to hit your rag two pair and your opponent connected with his hand (TPTK), you can expect to exract a lot of chips compared to your initial investment.

Also, let us not forget that when opponents see us playing bad cards hard, they are more willing to pay us off later when we actually have a monster.

Edit: But apparently, the key to most people's success, regardless of preflop style, is aggression.