In tournaments your goal should not always try to last as long as you can but give yourself the best chance to make the most amount of money you can. You might think that those are the same but they are not. If you just try to last as long as possible you will blind yourself down and then find yourself with less than 5 BB late in a tourney and have no fold equity when you shove. My advice is to play a tight but not overly tight game until you get to 20 BB or so for your stack. Then look for hands to re jam over open raisers when you have strong holdings. Much of the time you will have the better hand if they call and you will get many folds and pick up chips. If you do not get a strong hand to re jam then start looking to open jam yourself when you get to about 12 BB (my 20BB and 12BB are just recommendations and you can move these up or down slightly based on your preferences). If you are not getting any hands to open jam then you really need to widen your open jamming range by the time you get down to 7-8 BB. When you get low stacked you want to be the first one in the pot and you want to jam since there will be no maneuverability post flop.
You can generally play early stage tournament play like cash game; the main adjustment is when stacks get shorter and there are pay jumps -- particularly at the bubble as well as final table pay jumps.
The key strategy ideas for these are:
** Play looser / more aggressive as the big stack
** Tighten up as the mid stack (unless pressuring other mid stacks)
** Play fairly normal as the short stack.
Good luck in your tournaments!
I'm a super beginner palyer who started 3weeks ago. Recently I started to join tournament (really small buyin tournament though)
For in the money, how should I keep my stances? Do you have any recommendations?