Greetings

So, I used to play tournaments online before 2011 and the standard way to make money was just to play tight early and wait for double up spots toward the middle of the tournament on the basis that you could use your skill advantage and push fold charts to print money. That definitely was a good strategy back then.

After 2011 I've been exclusively a cash game player but I really just want to play tournaments now and I've found myself being way too loose early in the tournament and not protecting my stack, i.e. "tournament life"

Example:

hero has starting stack of 35K blinds 100/200 very first orbit of the tourney and has the button

UTG limps, MP limps, hero raises to 800 with 5s6s

Big blind raises to 1800, two folds, hero calls

Kd 8s 6h

BB bets 1500, hero calls

Ts

BB bets 4K

hero?

Raising over limps with 56s is too loose. You are very happy to limp behind and play a multiway pot IP with this hand.

As played, you have to call the small 3bet, call the flop, call this turn, and fold river if you dont improve.

I find that playing loose early in live tournaments can help in improving stack utility (by having over 150 blinds as we approach middle stages of the tournament). I don't mind getting knocked out in tournaments I can buy back in early. Playing loose is especially important when there are 3 to 6 players in the opening level of the tournament. Most of the places I have played mid-priced live tournaments (Foxwoods, the Venetian, even WSOP) start with just a few players in the first level. In general though I tend to play tighter in tournaments where more of the players are better than me post flop.

My sizing though when raising against limpers would be a bit higher. On this hand with 2 limpers I would make it 1100. And I am guessing I would have lost a bit more to the 3-bet.

As played I would call the pre-flop raise (because it was so small) the flop bet and the turn bet and hope to improve on the river.

One other thing, on the BTN here I probably just limp (call) pre-flop.

One of the reasons I raise after limpers is to "buy the BTN" to gain positional advantage post-flop by getting anybody to the left of me to fold pre-flop.

Another reason I raise after limpers is if I have an actual advantage (like with AJ+ or 88+) so that I am increasing the pot size.

Here we are the BTN and have a marginal hand so I would likely limp behind.

UTG limping ranges should usually be pretty tight, but some players don't care about that (especially limpers), so I don't think the ISO is too loose (depends a bit on villains). It's nice to have some disguised hands and low card coverage in your ISO range sometimes anyway and not play completely face up. I think limping behind is fine too.

I would ISO a bit bigger when there are 2 limpers.

Generally I play much more loose in tournaments than cash games, but I play more SNGs than anything else TBH, so you should take that with a grain of salt. I think there's lots of intrinsic value in having a big stack that ICM (or other metrics) doesn't measure.

I think you need to call the 3bet pre, and flop and turn are pretty easy calls too in position.

I think I agree with all of this.

(I suppose you could bluff jam certain rivers-- 7x most likely; maybe 9x-- but that's a wild play and I have zero idea of how often it will work. I usually don't bluff when I have no sense of how likely I am to get it through.)

Unlike the other posters, I am totally fine with the preflop raise. You might easily get it heads up with one of the limpers, who might have some total ****, and be playing fit/fold, as is usually the case in this spot.

Raising the turn seems to be targeting a very strong range. What are we hoping Villain has here that he folds? You have plenty of equity on the turn; no need to turn this into a bluff.