Hey guys, I want this thread to cover a few scenarios that have occur to me in the last few years when it comes to playing live poker tournaments in local casinos(in the uk) with buy in between 20£-100£. Let me first introduce myself to put a bit of context to the picture. I am a student and I have decided to support my studies by playing poker. I am not a profesional by any means but I am trying my best to improve my game. My plan is to play serious poker at least one more year(my last year in University) and after a graduate I will be reevaluating my situation (but now all paths lead to a graduate job). Last university year I played about 240 hours of live poker (cash(50/1,1/2) and tournaments (20£-100£)) and combined I have made just under 10 000£ profit. Which is more than enough to pay the rent and bills and have time to concentrate on University work. Enough with the context lets get to the action .
In most of the tournaments I play, I know most of the players, they are local gamblers or people who play for fun. There arent any high level thinking guys.
Which means concepts like position, betsizing, ICM, cbetting are things they have heard from television or a Youtube video but fail to actually grasp and implement in their game. I usually try to adjust my game to table dynamics (exploitative strategy)etc. if there are very loose guys I ll go to tight-aggresive mode, if everybody is liming and folding I ll go into loose-aggresive mode. However I have failed to either adjust or properly maximise winnings in one situation that has occured very frequently to me. Here is what I mean, when we go down to the final two tables on an average tournament(60-90 players) with 8-9 places played with stacksizes of about 10-30bb between other players and me having a stack between 10-20bb I think I make a lot of mistakes. I fail to steal the blinds because when I raise 2bb usually the BB will defend with any two cards, which consequently leads to high variance. When I steal with 3bb raise I seem to get all in from someone else or a fold, which results in me loosing chips over the long run because the times i win Pre and fold to an all in somehow dont result in me gradually increasing my stack. Here I want to add a bit more context, most of the players there are regulars who know that I am aggresive player which means they are in very defensive mode. Everytime I raise and they have 55+ or Aj+ they will just ship it (irrelevant of stack sizes and position) and defend with cards like suited connectors or broadway. There are some occasions in which I have taken alot because of their obvious abc game (the times I actually have a good hand) but I cant seem to actually do more than that. Is there a way of me gradually increasing my stack without showdown in this situations ?

IMO, you should not necessarily be raising more chips (like 3x) in an attempt to steal blinds in this late stage of the tourney. This will only increase the rate at which you will have to be successful in order for the strategy to be +EV. You should continue to make standard "small-ball" type raises (I would raise 2.25x, but that's just me). However, you do need to be aware that you could face re-raise all ins at this point in the tourney given the stack position of many of the other players at the table. So, the adjustment you should make has more to do with managing your own stack and opening range than pre-flop bet sizing.

If you have a monster stack, you can pretty much continue to be a table bully and raise from lots of different positions with a wide range of hands. Be prepared to fold your weakest holdings and call for some relatively small percentage of your stack knowing you may be well behind.

If you have anywhere from an average to a good-sized stack, narrow your raising range in early position quite a lot. You can raise wide in late position but be prepared to fold to re-raise shoves from any stack which could cost you more than 20% or so of your stack. Do not be overly concerned about players defending their blinds to smallish pre-flop raises, especially if they are average-stacked or below. Playing OOP can be really detrimental to them in this case, and it is easier for them to make mistakes, so your position advantage will be enhanced. Also, a lot of lower-level thinking players will not know when it is appropriate to shove a fairly short stack as opposed to call. By giving them a good price to call, you are actually inducing a mistake.

If you have a below average stack, or are short, then you really need to just study up on the shove/fold criteria, for which I'm sure there are lots of online resources. IMO, if you're not quite in the shove/fold zone, but are still fairly short, don't be afraid to play your standard game pre-flop (though perhaps tighten up your starting requirements a little). I'd rather lose a few chips by playing aggressively with a fairly short stack than lose those same chips to being blinded off. But this really comes down to how comfortable you are playing after the flop against your competition. If you feel you have an advantage, then err on the side of playing. If you don't, then err on the side of being patient. In either case, if you do lose some chips, all it does is put you in the shove/fold zone where your decisions tend to become a lot easier. It depends a great deal on the tourney structure and your relative chip stack, but as a very general rule, I typically would be willing to risk 10-16 BB in a hand where I started with 22-28 BB, because even if I lost, it would put me down around the 12 BB level, which I consider to be the shove/fold zone cutoff for most structures I play.