Trouble with this structure

[Barry_G]

22 person tournament. 2-tables 11 handed. $35 buy-in.

$1500 in starting chips. Blinds start at 25/50 and move up every 20 minutes. 25/50,50/100,75/150,100/200,150/300,200/400 etc.

Play is very weak tight for the most part. about two or three very loose passive calling stations and one or two lags.

I've played 3-4 tournaments and always seem to find myself short stacked by the time the blinds get to 100/200 or 150/300. I'm busting out around the final table, just before or just after every time.

The payout is a little top heavy, 60% to 1st. What kind of adjusments should i make? Should i gamble more early since i only start with 30BB. Is this just a bad structure?

I mainly play because i'm new to this group and they do have a good tournament, better structure, once a month. A 60-70 person toruney with $60 buy-in and i want to keep getting invited to that. I also make my money back in the side games after the tourney so i don't mind playing.

I don't really play any tourneys online anymore, i 4-table the Party $NL50 for 25-30k hands a month. It could be just a lack of putting any time into playing more tourneys. I do feel that i'm better than all of the players there. I would consider 2-3 of the players equal to me.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Lottery Larry]

I think you definately have to gamble here preflop, especially if everyone else is weak-tight or passive. You only start at 30:1 and losing one decent hand cripples you going into round 2. If you play no hands for the first two rounds (which should be about 15-25 hands, easy to not find a "good" hand in that time), you're going to have a stack where the BB is 12% of your chips and every pot at least 18% of your stack.

Plus, with 22 players the money is very top-heavy for 1st place. You want the best chance to take that money, so you need chips for a cushion against the passive players. Limping into the money isn't cost/time effective. Busting out of 10 early and winning one more than pays for itself, especially if you can make up for the 10 tourneys in the side games.

Steal blinds, push good and moderate hands aggressively preflop and see what the cards have in store for you. You're going to run into goods hands with 11 players, but you have to get lucky anyway to get the top two spots, so push those chips around

[Mithrandir]

That's really not a lot of chips for that blind structure.
Not a lot of gambling to be done there. You're pretty much either comitted to a hand or you're not due to the size of the blinds and the starting chip amounts.

[Zetack]

That's a really sucky structure. I like a structure with a lot of play and that one ain't it. Not much you can do about that.

Be more willing to put your tourney life on the line early than you ordinarily would, but try to be the one putting other people to the test and try to make your moves with position.

[Quicksilvre]

[ QUOTE ]
That's really not a lot of chips for that blind structure.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed. This structure is actually very good, but it starts much too high. It would be much better starting at T2500 or T3000.

[Mithrandir]

Well, THIS is the WSOP Main Event blind structure...
The blinds start the same, and sometimes take hours to increase. AND they start with 10K in chips...