Midnite Madness at FullTilt

Ok, so in addition to my moving up to the $4 180s at Pokerstars I've also started playing the Midnight Madness mtt at FullTilt. I played my first one last night and managed to cash in a field of 2706--not a lot, only $4 profit but better than nothing I guess for a 1st attempt.
I had expected play to be TA, but it seemed rather loose to me. It played more like a $2 mtt rebuy than anything else. Does anyone else who plays this particular mtt find that to be true or maybe it was just that particular game?
I played ULTRA conservative, playing only 6 hands, 5 won and, of course, the last 1 which I lost. It didn't help that I was absolutely card dead for the last 3/4 of the mtt. But I was able to just sit back and glide into the small cash by just letting everyone around me play fairly loose.
I am wondering if anyone out there has some strategy tips for this tournament. I'm also still looking for some $4 180 advice too (I have a thread for that also).
This is a large forum and I'm hoping someone out there has some good advice for me. Thanks!

I've played the midnight madness and I didn't find it to be that different from other low buy in tournaments. There are plenty of donks early, but also plenty of decent players capable of making plays at you. You want to put yourself in position to get chips from the weak players before they give them away to someone else. It's way easier to get chips off a donk than someone who regularly plays tournaments and actually thinks about how to play poker.

Ultra conservative playing style is good for making it into the money, but once you get there you won't have much of a chip stack unless you had a sick run of cards.

Do you ever try to see cheap flops IP with suited connectors and pocket pairs? If you hit a big draw or a set you can probably take the stack of a donk who hit top pair.

If you aren't getting any good cards and the blinds are starting to eat you away you're going to have to steal some pots. Look for the tight players who aren't defending their blinds and try to bully them.

One of my largest tournament cashes I had AA once AK once and KK once, never had QQ or any other premium hand. I was able to get 4th place by being aggressive, stealing from weak players, and restealing from LP raisers.

One method of stealing from aggressive players is the check raise bluff. If they bet in LP and you call from the blinds try and check raise a flop like Kxx. A large % of the time they are cbetting without a king because it's likely that you don't have a king either. Using that idea you can check raise and if they don't have a king or a powerful hand they will fold a lot of the time, especially if you haven't been playing many hands. In the later stages of a tournament a successful checkraise bluff can give you a nice boost to your stack.

There is no set way to go deep in a tournament, but only playing premium hands is an almost guaranteed way NOT to go deep. Anyone can play AA KK and QQ, but if you want to win you'll have to play poker.

"You want to put yourself in position to get chips from the weak players before they give them away to someone else." THAT is great advice sir and I think I have been doing so, though not realizing that I was! On more than one occasion I've said to myself "geez, I hope a get a good hand soon so I can get this guy's chips before someone else does!" while watching some aggro maniac toss his stack around.

I absolutely agree with your stated drawbacks to the ultra conservative style play. I haven't tried the check-raise bluff much, but I have used re-raises from the blind to stop the button from stealing every hand. With a tight table image they fold pretty quickly and if they don't then I know they really do have a hand this time. I've used the check-raise, but only if I've actually had SOME kind of a hand and read the villain as weak. I'll have to try and utilize that play more often perhaps.

What I mostly have to work on is getting better at recognizing spots where I can steal pots using my position, as you've brought up.

I played another yesterday and just missed the cash, but I played more hands and attempted to use my position and my table image more than I did in the last tournament. This resulted in a more volatile stack size, but that's all part of the learning curve! Truth is, I did get my chips in good 99% of the time, and if I had won one or two of close those races my stack would have been enough to carry me much farther into the money for sure.

Thanks for your advice and we'll see what happens next week.