Early stages of tournaments

Is it ever worth it to be aggressive early in a tournament. Seems you either get a small pot or lose a big one. With hands like A K, if you raise 3 or 4 times blind and then don't hit, what do you do? Continuation bet and you could lose a nice chunk of your stack. Hit the A and you could lose a big chunk if someone hit A plus his kicker hit. I'm just finding it easier to fold early where I use to play a lot because of the smaller blinds. I think tournaments are decided in the mid - late levels as the average stacks get closer to 10-15 blinds. Anyone think you can make any significant gains early in MTT's?

Along these same lines when someone does hit an early hand and doubles up or is big stack early on the majority of people are pushing the pots with big raises or just blatant back to back to back all ins. Do people think this works or is it set up for failure?

Sure, in most tourneys I've been in, there is a group of folks that want to double up early or go out. Also, the early double up enables you to take more chances and play more marginal hands.

It all depends on field size and how many players are at the table. Small fields I will play much tighter than large field tourneys. 6 player I play much looser than 9 player. Freerolls............expect just about anything.

You just need the mindset all i have to do is win 3 or 4 big pots in the first hour. If you do that you will be in the thick of things. Just stay patient and wait for the right moment. You can be aggrassive after that first break when things get more serious.

You just need the mindset all i have to do is win 3 or 4 big pots in the first hour. If you do that you will be in the thick of things. Just stay patient and wait for the right moment. You can be aggrassive after that first break when things get more serious.

I agree with that. After the break, play def. gets more aggressive, you better be ready to play not expect to be able to chase draws cheap. Seems the later you get in a tourney, the less post flop play you see.

Yea u gotta be careful in the first stage of a tourney dont worry about the guys with huge stacks and try to catch up to them in the beginning just play responibly and and you should see things changing for the better after the first break though sometimes you'll still find really loose payers after the break but keep an eye on them and eventually people wil start playing right

I dont like to play agressive in the beggining. But I like to be loose.

Personally I like to double up at the earliest opportunity so I'll have the freedom to play more drawing hands with less consequence later on...I'm less inclined to play an 8-9 suited or pocket 6s if I'm short stacked after the first break, and those kinds of hands are almost guaranteed to get you paid off when they hit. An early double up also goes a long way to establishing a table image. I tend to target the "all-in" player that throws down with garbage and just wait for the opportunity to hit him hard. Yank most of, if not all of his stack and play only premium hands to give myself a conservative image, then I'll start playing connectors and even garbage sometimes the exact same way after the break when the table is convinced I'm only playing premium hands.