I recently took down my first live tournament while on holiday in Spain and having one down from the initial buzz of winning, especially as it covered my holiday twice over, I wanted to reflect on how I played and to get a bit of advice on a few observations I made.
The buy in was 30 euros with 20 euro rebuys for 2 hrs. There were 70 runners and 1.7k up top for first.

Firstly, I believe I played well in the sense that I only got lucky out once (calling an 8BB shove vs my 30BB stack near the bubble with a10s v KK.) and I was unlucky not to have a few double ups, twice shoving 15BB pre flop with QQ only to end up splitting the pot with a boarded straight- on both occasions I had the winning hand on the turn. I came onto the final table with 15% of the chips and from there it was just a patient run to heads up, stealing blinds in position and shoving a decent range of hands vs short stacks to accumulate. I took a deal heads up with 40% of the chips as it was the biggest live cash I’d had and I’ve had no experience in live heads up play. I actually won the tournament two hands later and won a seat for another tournament.

Whilst I am pleased with how I played in the later stages of the tournament, after the first two hours of rebuy period, where I maintained an average stack, I spent the next 2-3 hours before the bubble as a short stack with around between 8-11BB. I managed to steal blinds by shoving at least once each orbit and the few occasions I did get called I wasn’t able to get the needed double up (see above) until near the bubble where I doubled up twice and ended up with a healthy stack.

Now for my questions:

During the early stages of the tournament, there seemed to be a lot more limping, limp/calling than in online poker. Is this common in higher stake/circuit tournaments, or is it still the norm to always open raise? How can I take advantage of this in the future to build a more comfortable stack going into the post rebuy stages?

Whereas in online poker 10-15 BB is generally accepted as push/fold time, it seemed as though I still had quite a lot of fold equity when shoving 7/8BBs even against big stacks. Is this also common for all live poker or just lower buy in events?

In one particular hand 2 away from the bubble a guy in UTG+1 open raised 3x. It folded to me in CO and I had AQs. Having only been on the table 20mins or so and immediately doubled up to 18BB with TTs I 3bet shoved and the guy instacalled with AJ. Himself having I about 23BB I felt this wasn’t a great call, especially as I hadn’t played particularly aggressively since joining the table. That said, I also had little information on him and I think I felt I was on a bit of a rush having finally got a double up and being so close to the bubble, I expected him to fold and not risk losing most of his chips so close to the money. The question is, given that a raise UTG+1 should indicate strength and that I had no reads on the guy, was my 3bet shovethe correct play so near the bubble? I think I would almost certainly do so online however I’m still not sure on range adjustments etc. for live poker.

This was only my third live tournament in a casino so advice on early stage play, hand range adjustments and adjusting to less aggressive tables would be much appreciated. I will also be checking out all the live tourney articles and videos as I hope to play more during the next few months!