TV qualifier help needed

[sunek]

Hi

I have a mission. A television company in my home country is launching a series of TV poker tournaments during this month. I want a seat. There are still about 15 seats available. To get a set you will have to win an MMT and only the winner of each tournament will win a seat the rest gets nothing.

There are about 70 players each time and I am in the better half of the field but probably not in the top 10 of best players. I have played 3 qualifiers until now and my positions have been 5, 12 and 24.

Each player starts with 3.000 in chips and the time for each blind level are 15 minutes. The blind start out very softly and develops something like this:

10/20, 15/30, 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200, 100/200/25, 150/300/25, 200/400/50…. 2000/4000/200

I usually do fine the first 4 levels. The times I have played I have doubled or tripled when the blinds reached 75/150. The strategy for the first 2-3 levels is pretty simple: play any hand with potential if it can be done cheaply (suited connecters and small pairs) and play high pairs and hands like AKo, and AQs the Dan Harrington way. When your hands hit, play them hard and make traps with our monsters. It usually only takes about 2 good hands to double or triple you stack since there are many players in each hand and the game is very aggressive.

The problems arise when the blind level increases to around 200/400/50. At this point there will be about 20-25 players left many with relatively short stacks (1500-2500) who will go all in all the time as an attempt to steal blinds and calling these players can make you or break you since some goes all in with 75o and others with pocket aces. At the same time there will be a few huge stack at the size of 30 K who steals blinds all the time as well since the know the can put most other out of business in one hand.

And now for the question: are there certain strategies you can use in these “the winner takes it all” tournaments? It is obvious that a high level of aggression is needed through out the whole tournament. You should not play marginal hands like K9o unless your stack is running short.

Is there any way of avoiding that a tournament turns in to a lottery when the field is down to only a few players?

Best regards

sunek

P.S. I have read both Dan Harringtons books.