So lately, I've moved up from small stakes tournaments ($10-$50) to middle stakes tournaments ($100-$500) and I've been having mild success. I use the term mild because I'm making profit from the switch (much more than I did in small stakes), but I can't seem to really have a breakthrough win.

For example, I've been playing middle stakes now for the past year, I've won 40-50 person tournament for maybe $1500, but I haven't really hit a big win just yet. I play in lots of 300+ people tournaments for $300+ buy ins, but I always seem to min cash or get knocked out right before the payouts pick up.

At first I thought it was because I was playing scared being so deep for so much money, but I analyzed the hands I played and deduced that it was not the problem.

So my question for this is, am I supposed to just be grinding away here and there and inching my way up the ladder? It's very disheartening to have literally not won a single tournament over 100 people in over a year.

Not sure of your samplesize...

Could be your sample size.

If you're making it deep like you say I would assume you're missing key spots to accumulate chips. Maybe you can't see them yet and with more practice they will start jumping out at you.

variance is a b**ch. keep grinding

If ur making profit u will be fine. Eventually u will ship some tournies. U just have to get used to ur BI and then u will be fine. What Finnera said:

Even if you play every day for a year you cannot have a decent sample size for live MTTs.

God, I'll never understand how people can put up with grinding live tournaments: huge rake, small fields, terrible structures, and you can only play one table at a time. Trying to "break out" by grinding live tournaments is a fool's errand unless you start out by selling your soul to the devil.