Pot odds preflop ?

Ok so recently I have noticed that I have been getting great pot odds preflop with mediocre cards to call and seem to be loosing alot of chips early in a tounament.
when I say mediocre I mean like k/q,k/j,a/10,stuff like that.
This usually occurs early stages of a tournament,but if the pot odds are right should I make the call still preflop.

I have been playing the low cost (Freerolls -> $1) tournaments and I know what you are talking about. In the first hour it seems that almost everyone at the table calls to see the flop. So when it comes to you, it only costs you a little bit to have a shot at 5 - 6 times the bet.

I usually don't call them as I find that unless I have a decent hand, the fact that there are 5 or 6 others in it, my hand isn't good anymore, and I find it eats through my chips after a few rounds of the table. If I do hold a decent hand, I will do a significant raise to get them all out of the pot. The exception to this is when I am seated in SB position, when it gets to me the pot odds (if no one has raised) are now 10 - 12 times what I need to invest. In this case I usually make the call and reevaluate after the flop.

The other thing that I have noticed is that if I call from anything earlier than Cutoff, someone after me almost always raises the pot (probably because they actually have a hand and they want to get all the limpers out of it), and I have just wasted that call without even getting the flop like I intended.

So bottom line is I rarely do this before cutoff, and almost always do it from SB if no raise has happened. Cutoff and Button I will usually do a significant raise if I have any sort of a hand (like the ones listed above).

I sort of agree with fergy here.

The early rounds of all tourneys do offer some interesting opportunities, but the first few hands seldom do. So for the first orbit or so, I'm generally restricting my play to premium hands, or premium opportunities.

After 5 orbits or so, the play generally stabilizes and actual pot odds can play somewhat normally. By then I have usually figured out something about the flow of the game, and the table I'm at and its players as well. By the break, in almost all tourneys, something like 50% of the starting group are gone.

My tourney mantra goes something like this;

First 2 obits AA, KK only or a great knowledge of some particular players.
Orbits 3-10, 'investigate' the players. This will involve some specific raises against specific players while in specific positions (late). A willingness to lay it down to any return aggression is mandatory, and most of the time I have no problem doing it. When I 'cop' and attitude against a player, I am doomed. I will make mistakes. So I try very hard to catch myself before I make that mistake. I do much better once I know a villain is agro, and I can wait.

After the 10th orbit, it becomes chip accumulation time. 'Steal, and be stolen from' plays big from the 10th orbit thru the break and till about 10 spots from the bubble. I only takes 1 purposeful steal every 2 orbits (on average), along with a standard win rate, to get ahead. 1 steal per 2 orbits is barely enough to raise anyone's eyebrows. More than that will raise those eyebrows, and put a target on you icon.

Moral of the story, is you can't win the tourney in the first few orbits but you sure can lose it.

Hands like KJ and AT can be quite risky. What if you call with KJ and flop comes Jxx. What if your opponent has AJ now? Or with AT and the flop is Axx. What if your opponent had AJ, AQ or AK here?
In both cases you will risk getting busted.
If you want to call better chose a hand like 89suited or a small pair. Then you wont risk running into the problems displayed above, and if you get lucky and hit your set or straight you might get payed off dearly.

Well in the first hour and half i would play dead tight in freerolls / $1 tournaments. You get to many people calling with crap. If i hit something Big raise it 6 times you normally get an idiot who calls you.

I really do think early on is a good time to get pot odds preflop. Because of the amount of people calling!!

In the first hour it is a crap shoot. The odds you get might not even be worth the play. Too may nuts to bust you out on a suck out. It is risky but when it works it gives you a great jump into th enext couple of hours.