iv been playing a lot of mtts online recently and im cashing increasingly more often, however iv tried to play both tight and loose but cannot seem to get further than the small cashes. whenever i seem to go out i have a coinflip or get sucked out on. is this just normal and to be expected or should these sort of situations be avoided? i try to get my money in preflop when i beleive i have the best hand but is this a good thing to do? any other advice on progressing further would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

I actually need help in this same area also. I've found (from reading here) that playing tight until the blinds increase/ antes kick in works very well. Then loosening up a bit. But after getting to the cash... just can't seem to get to the ft's.

well i dunno which tourneys you play in terms of fieldsize, but the more players the more time its going to take until you'll get a big score.
of course you should always work on your game if you feel like you're having some leaks to fix, but the most important thing to to if you're a winning player at you're limit is to put in volume.
if youve been playing 20 or 30 tourneys with 2k field sizes, it wouldve been so lucky if you final tabled one of them (if dunno which tourneys and how many youve played so far obv)
play alot of tourneys and you will make the big cash sooner or later

Emmm, yes!

You can't get away from all ins and races late in a tourney, the blinds are just too high to avoid them. You should embrace any opportunity that gives you a +EV shot at building a big stack, and that more often than not means risking your tournament life. This is the essence of variance in MTT play, but stay aggresive and it's only a matter of time before you get the big result you've been waiting for.

you need to play a lot before expecting to break through a big cash. many players play 20 or more tournaments every single day and have gone a month or more without a large cash. those type of things are very plausible and within statistical norms

Straight up.....

Play 00.1 and 00.2 cash game - 6 player - it will make you a better player.
take some more lessons on the tables

Stay away from coin flips, leave yourself options on the table, if you call coin flips there's no where to go with them, unless you have a monster, and if it is a coin fliip make sure it's a hand that you will be comfortable going out on. To make it to the final table you have to build your stake, not with donks, but by ABC poker. If you play tight and aggressive and play only good starting hands, it will come, it's later on in the tournament that you need to be creative. If you have a good image on the table, when you need to steal a blind or two it will be much easier.

The later you get into a tournament, play only paint or good drawing hands, and never commit yourself too early to a pot, leave yourself options.

AND just because your holding AQ or AJ, KQ....J10, KJ don't be afraid to lay it down if you think you are behind.

IF that all fails you.........SHOVE IT

Just keep playing and use it as motivation, eventually you'll get to the final table. Imo when the bubble bursts people loosen up again so tighten up around there and just keep trying to get your chips in while in good shape.

make sure your always working with a stack, later on in tournaments you need to be willing to 3-4bet shove lighter when the opportunity presents itself. It picks up huge pots without showdown or just run good and suck out.

You'll never get those big scores working a 10-20bb stack.

Of course you can

Do a search on the forum for these MTT topics/strategies:

-Increasing aggression as ante kick in
-"M"
-3-betting light
-reshoving light, i.e- what stack size is appropriate to shove with and against
-snapping off all ins of 7-15BB by assigning shoving ranges to opponents
-bubble play (money bubble, final table bubble etc.)

There are probably some other concepts to check out but I think these are some of the most important if you really want to improve.