There's a freeroll this Sunday for April's most hours played in cashgames. Top 80 enter, 1st pays $20K, 80th pays $1,200. The blinds are 30-minute levels. The prizepool is $170K, and if I recall correctly 2nd place pays 13K, and 3rd pays 8K.

I've played with most of the players all month, and in my career I've played a handfull of tournaments and SNGs. But I haven't played a serious tournament in years. I am wondering what I can look over and study in the next three days? Or if anyone has general advice for how to approach this style of tournament?

Best thing you can do in a short time is study preflop ranges at various stack sizes, especially on the short side-- I'm guessing a freeroll's structure moves pretty quickly.

Postflop, I don't know how much you can get done in a short time, but getting an idea of when to c-bet and not c-bet on various types of boards is a good idea.

In both cases, definitely note how you should size your bets-- smaller overall in general, although postflop you'll vary your sizes more.

I'm not sure the best place for a free resource for charts and things is, though. There are a few sites you could sign up for or books you could buy.

I agree with Nath. Brush up on short stacked play, since this is the biggest difference between cash games and tournaments. ICM is also important, but its sort of intuitive. Near the bubble or on the final table you do not want to go broke, if significantly shorter stacks are hanging around. So you tend to stay away from big confrontations with players, that can bust you or cripple your stack. Which among others mean more pot control and less thin value bets.

I just read the tournament structure on the Venetian website... It is a freeroll only for the 80 who qualified and each person has to pay $40 at registration from 9am to 10am. If you don't register by 10am you can't play! Min cash is $1,200...

The author I would most highly recommend for people who are new to tournaments would be Arnold Snyder. I think he has at least two books and I would read the first one first "The Poker Tournament Formula" and if you like it then "The Poker Tournament Formula 2". I also got a lot out of Jonathan Little's poker tournament books as well. But in fairness I read them at least 12 years ago.

If I were in your shoes I would be getting it in when the odds were even (or in your favor) so that you remove the post flop skills of some of the other players. In order to go deep typically you have to win some all in flips and a few hands where you get it in good (like AK vs AQ or KK vs JJ). But those hands typically occur later in the tournament when you are relatively short stacked (like less than 30 blinds but sometimes on 4 bets it could be 40 or more blinds).

I think the biggest difference I am seeing between tournaments and cash games is that the pre-flop raise sizes are typically much smaller in tournaments. At over 100 blinds I would recommend 3x, over 50 blinds 2.5x, under 50 blinds 2.25x, under 25 blinds like 2x (I do it 2.1x but you will likely be urged to min raise). I typically shove with under 15 blinds though others do it only under 12 or 10 blinds. And 3 betting preflop I would jam with under 25 bb's.

Also I would recommend not limping first in pre-flop. I see that a lot in cash games but in tournaments its possibly going to cost you.

Stealing the blinds is important from the BTN and CO (and even HJ sometimes) especially when there is a BB ante (which may start at the first level). But be careful (less wide) if the SB and/or BB are raising a lot pre-flop.

I wish you luck.