I know you I say it a lot, but I believe that at this stage of the tourney you want to be playing tight and aggressive. That's where my game always starts. I begin tight/aggressive. I might loosen up once I've built up some chips and some of the maniacs have been eliminated. As we get into the latter stages of a tournament, I'm going to revert back to tight/aggressive. Not so tight that you watch your chips dwindle away as you wait for A-K, but now is not the time that you want to be bleeding chips, trying to see a lot of flops with marginal, speculative
hands.
This is also the time that you really want to be focused. Position is important. But not just your position. You want to see who is constantly raising from the cutoff and the button, and who is constantly raising UTG. Of course we know that a player must be strong if they are raising from early position. Not necessarily. I find a lot of players will raise from UTG at this point because they will get credit for having a strong holding. If they can take down the blinds from UTG then they are basically freerolling their own blinds. The point is that if you are dealt a decent hand, it might be worth it to get involved if you think someone is just making a position raise.
Also, you might want to pay attention to where the short stacks are. I know a lot of players are inclined to keep pressure on the short stacks by constantly raising their blinds. Be careful though. At some point they are going to have to make a stand. In fact, you might want to be aware of any stacks below 15xBB. When these players choose a hand to play, it will likely be for all their chips. So when you are selecting hands to play, you might want to have in mind what you would do with your hand if someone were to play back at you, which they will if they feel like you are raising light to steal blinds.
And when it comes to stealing blinds, don't get too carried away, not just with stealing a certain player's blind every time you're in the cutoff. That too. I mean at some point, they are going to look you up. But I'm talking about going all-in to steal blinds. Few things irritate me like a player going all-in just to steal blinds. Why so much? It looks super suspicious, like the last thing you would want is for someone to call you. Just because you've got twice my stack doesn't mean I won't call you. I try to play smart, not scared. And I would love to turn it around to the point where I'm the one holding twice your stack because I caught you shoving with J-3 off. Why risk half of your stack to try to pick up the blinds? Why risk 20xBB to pick up 1.5xBB + antes when you could get the job done with 3xBB. Even if you get flat called and miss the flop and have to fold, you're only out of 3xBB instead of 20xBB.
I don't know. That's just what I think.