I've been playing a lot of this tournament in the past month and I've noticed that I often have difficulties in the earliest blind levels (20 & 30 BB). There are two general spots.

1. Playing the likes of 77, 88, 99, 1010 in early to mid position. If I open the pot to 3 or even 4 big blinds it's unusual that there won't be at least 2 callers. Ignoring the rare occasions where I flop a set these lead to very tricky spots post-flop where I'll often be out of position with at least 2 overcards and often feel I have no choice but to check/fold.

So as far as I can see there are a few possible solutions to this:
(a) fold them pre-flop
(b) bet way bigger - like 7 or 8 BBs in an effort to reduce it to a heads up pot at most
(c) limp-call with them and play them purely for set potential
(d) barrel them blindly regardless of the flop texture.

All of these options seem kinda horrible. Just curious to see what others would do with them?


2. Playing the likes of AK, AQ, AJ, KQ. Nobody seems to fold to c-bets. If I miss the flop it seems like I'll need to fire two bullets to shake people off. However that's a dangerous game given that I only started with a 1500 stack. It seems like a pretty good way to bleed money. However playing fit or fold with them seems pretty weak (and also expensive since they miss twice as often as they hit).



Both points really boil down to a lack of fold equity. Just wondering how other players who play this particular tournament play these kind of hands at this stage? A lot of the regs at this game with OPR values of >99% seem to be kind of LAGy which really makes no sense to me given the lack of fold equity.

1. - 2.5x 50bb+, 3x ~100bb. It's ok if there are callers and the flop is bad. You're printing money on good flops and it's easy to stack people.

2. Value town your top pairs. Multiway on bad boards, check-folding is ok. HU, just play accordingly, you're probably over cbetting flops OOP.

As said, raise 2.5x EP if you are getting multiway pots.
No need to cbet missed flops oop and multiway. You have showdown value anyway.

That may be true but it's very hard to realise that showdown equity because if you raise pre-flop and don't c-bet when OOP then generally your opponent(s) at this level will bet with most of their range leaving you in a very tough spot. Now you can take advantage of this tendency by check raising your made hands but that doesn't really help in the 2/3 flops that you miss.

Use your postflop stats to help in these spots. If they're betting their entire range when you check, then start check-calling or check-raising more. Pay attention to how often they call c bets, how often they bet when the preflop raiser checks to them, how often they fold turn, etc.