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4000 chips
25/50 blinds
blinds go up every 20 minutes.

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How fast is the progression? If level 4 is like 200/400 the "push with crap all the time" is probably a sound strategy, since your tournament basically is over if you haven't at least doubled within the first 30 hands.

These kind of structures favors bold moves and fast play, and "playing tight to build a tight image" is probably a losing strategy. It's not clear from your post whether the opponents push before or after the flop, but the way you descibe yourself makes me guess you're primarily a "pre-flop" player. If I'm right this might be one of the reasons you're not winning - you will not see enough deals to be able to base your success on picking up prime hands.

The fast structure imposes a very high variance and there's little you can do to counteract that - you just have to roll with the punches and capitalize on random luck. Playing tight probably puts your "bad" opponents at an advantage over you.

My suggestion is to experiment with a significantly more LAGgy style, realizing the very often you'll find yourself on the rail within the first 20 minutes of the tournament - but with the chance of building a big stack and being able to dominate once in a while.

If that's not your game you might consider focussing on playing one-table sats for the $500 buy-in (or bigger) tourneys, where the structure favors your style.

Best,

McMelchior (Johan)

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Playing tight early on is OK. Usually the early play is too loose, but not as loose as some online tournaments. Sometimes you bust out in the first 20 minutes, but if you are in the habit of busting out in round 1 with deep money, you are probably playing like a maniac.

However, when the blinds get huge, particularly with a big ante, you have to play aggressive. Sometimes real short stacked, you need to push with anything. This is discussed in HOH2, as well as Sklansky, McEvoy, etc.