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Its all about changing gears when blinds go up and knowing how to adjust your game.
Think of tournaments as 2 parts: Early Stages and Late Stages.
During the early stages, blinds are very low and stacks are very deep. So, you have pleny of time play and enough chips to manuever. You can avoid situatins like coinflips where you're either under or just a tiny favorite. You obviously should be avoiding 30/70 and 40/60 situations preflop. Small pairs, suited connectors have a lot of value when stacks are deep because of implied odds while hands like Kx, Ax, etc have very little value. You can play very tight early on and wait for big starting hands if you wish.
When blinds go up, though, stacks are no longer deep (assuming you're sitting on an average/short stack). You have to keep an eye on your stack compared to blinds. The more BB's you have, the tighter/looser you can play depending. However, the less you have, you're more or less forced into playing a lot looser and opening your hand range more. You could play tight, but if you're sitting on short number of blinds it isn't advised.
So, during the later stages you have to adjust your game. While early stages is all about surviving, late stages are about surviving and accumulating chips in order to battle the rising blinds. Now, you make plays like blind steal and re-stealing. Small pairs and suited connectors go down in value if you arent getting the proper odds preflop because of little implied odds, where as hands like Kx Ax go up in value. Where you look to avoid playing 50/50 or 30/70-40/60 situations during the early stages, you're usually be correct to play them at the late stages.
Having a 1K stack with blinds at 75/150-a coinflip is a great situation to be in.
...I just realized I'm replying to a very old thread. LOL.
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