Playing MTTs online

I always used to think I was more of a tournament player than a cash player online. When I first started I joined Pacific Poker, mainly because that was the one advertised around Oxford Brookes Student Union, plus a mate of mine from PP nights was also on the same site and recommended it to me. I distinctly remember the micro $888 gtd tourneys they used to run, mainly because of how fishy they were, with Danni (my ex, and the poker playing girlfriend from the previous post) and I exchanging bad beats night after night after night!

After Danni and I split up, I drastically reduced the number of tourneys I played and started hitting the $0.25/$0.50 cash tables hard, mainly because that way then I could stop if the new girlfriend was getting fed up of the amount of time I played. The cash tables were bringing that much in that I didn't see the leak that the MTTs were until much, much later. Fast forward a few months and a few bad beats in cash later, and I was wondering where all my money had gone.

I sat down with Danni and we had a lovely long conversation about MTT's, and the style we both played, and we came to the conclusion that I just played too tight (I still do, apparently), and didn't understand the whole concept of raising in position, calling with suited connectors etc, and for the life of me I had never heard of the term "pot odds". Bearing in mind that this is a major part of the game now, you can begin to understand why I had such a leak! I resolved to learn more about these fundamentals, and surprise surprise 3 weeks later I came 2nd in a $5 f/o donkathon on BSQ for a tidy $350.

Recently though, I've been flicking through my results, and I've not really done anything MTT wise. Cash is going well, I've been solely playing for Badbeat on $100 a day and am $400 in profit over the last 3 months playing mainly $0.10/$0.20, but MTT wise I'm getting nowhere. I had a nice result in the Mansion New Year Special, taking home $160 for a $1 entry (31/3553ish, top 100(!) paid) and just came 7th in a Stars $4 180 man SNG, but apart from that there's nothing. I don't really think it's down to me playing badly either, I just seem to be losing a lot more races/getting rivered/going completely card dead etc. I've also noticed that at the minuscule stakes I play, a lot of players don't have the ability to lay hands down they really shouldn't be calling with, and inevitably end up sucking out.

Maybe I should start playing at a higher level, although from what I hear the bad beats/suckouts are just the same up there, they just cost you more!