Online Tournaments

With time off of work, I've been playing tourneys quite a bit. Quick small ones that have let me really watch and see where I have trouble. There is a point in a tourney, after about 2/3 or 3/4 of the entrants are gone, where things start to really change. Maybe because the blinds start to pressure more of the remaining players, the tables for the first time in the tourney get down to 5 or 7 players instead of 9 and 10, maybe it's just stress. but play changes in some way, and that's a great moment to alter your play and change your whole style. I've been trying that, and it helps alot. The other thing that happens is every flop you see could put you all in unless you've got a deep stack. So I find myself trying to balance aggressive pre-flop play with careful post flop play. It's very hard for me to do, and when i don't pull it off, I usually get busted out trying to push a 4 flush, hoping a strong bet will win me the pot, trying a big re-raise maybe. When it does work, I feel like my play gets very mechanical and predictable---half pot bet on the flop, check on the turn means I don't have shit. Smart players will figure that out real quick, so I may need to find a way to mix it up, but it works real nice for a while. I can normally start building up a nice stack for the final table or two by just slowly picking up the blind steals.....3xblind raise, then half pot bet on the flop....if half of those work out, then i'm slowly building a stack....sometimes more than half work. I figure I start at about 40 players left, with about 20Xbig blind stack, I should be well off for the final two tables. Then it's time to change it up again for short-handed table. If you're number 12, and they can't get it down to the final table yet, you could be playing 6-handed or less. Then you make the final table, and it's back to 9 or 10 handed for a while, then change back to short handed. It's pretty straight forward getting deep. Once you're deep, though, the real challenge starts. I'll need to start figuring out how/if to loosen up for short handed tables.