OP: Whenever people have strong opposite opinions, there is usually truth in all viewpoints. Humans are eerily binary, unable to see past the black and the white and unable to comprehend reality in all its complexity without breaking it down to A vs B without realizing there is some truth both in A and B.
I am an unexperienced player as well and am sure my viewpoint is faulty but would like to help a fellow beginner, so here goes:
I know about the tight/aggressive vs loose/aggressive debate in the early stages of a SNG and don't pretend to have an answer. I would say at the high stakes I'm sure treating the early levels of a SNG as a cash game is essential (as are other things, such as balancing your range and so on). Otherwise I imagine you would get destroyed.
However, this is a low stakes donk-and-go and you are inexperienced yourself. I guarantee playing tight/aggressive and allowing room for your opponents to make the mistakes they are most capable of making (which will eventually cost them their tournament life) is the option that will make the most money.
You need a way to simplify your decision-making process. Imagine a ratio of energy expended vs. money gained and assess each situation in that light as well. If you are playing a single table with the aim of learning then breaking down each multiway situation in this manner is great, but if you're looking to multitable and make money avoid multiway bloated pots with marginal holdings (and no real certainty that you are ahead at all or will be ahead on the turn or river). There are better spots than this.
I'm inexperienced but can see merit in practically all the choices. By raising preflop, you want to isolate in position, which is great (but will never get the job done at these stakes). By limping you keep the pot small and play some postflop (the flop action will be multiway regardless of your raise, so by keeping the pot small you at least don't make the pot disproportinally big to your middle-strength hand). Etc. Etc.
At these stakes and with my skill level, however, I'm folding. Why?
1) The flop is likely to be multiway regardless of my action preflop (I sometimes bump it up to as high as ~150 preflop with AA in similars spots simply because I know I'm getting called. Especially after a series of limpers, since the limpers interpret my move by projecting their own behavior on to me - they are more likely to do this with a middle-strength hand to steal the dead money).
2) It will take a great deal of energy for me to maneuver through the streets. None of these players are folding on the flop with any piece of the board whatsoever, any draws, any "premiums" that were "trapping" preflop (AK or the like) and so on. It's simply not worth the effort of painstakingly evaluating the flop, turn and river against several loose passives that have extremely wide ranges early in a SNG like this.
Stick to the usual, boring, efficient stuff:
- In the early stages let them kill themselves off. Villains will do crazy things. They don't perceive stacks in blinds, they just aesthetically evaluate whether a bet is big or not, which makes room for insanity early on.
Similarly, they judge their stack to be "short" after having lost a couple hundred and continue to play irrationally. Avoid big pots with marginal holdings. Avoid multiway pots with marginal holdings.
- Bomb for value with very strong holdings when opponents are likely to be drawing.
- Set mine when stacks are deep enough (villains
will give you their stack on a top pair or worse).
And most importantly, learn ICM push/fold spots, both nash equilibrium and custom ones and exploit them mercilessly later on. Villains on these stakes will usually shove too tight and call too tight, making them easy to exploit (you shove wider and call tighter).
As for the hand itself, I think you played it in a reasonable manner on all streets. Kudos for folding the river, you were beat for sure. The mistake was not the hand itself but the decision to play such a hand in such a context.
If this were a higher stakes SNG (in my experience even $5 SNGs play considerably different with all the usual loose passives nitting it up incredibly and folding to simple C-bets almost all of the time if they miss) where I know my raise will get the job done, I would definitely raise JTs on the button to get heads up with a weak player then punish him for playing out of position.