Small stakes online MTT's can often become a "crap shoot", especially if you're in one with a large field (800 or more people). The blinds and ante's increase so quickly that you can't just sit back and wait for good cards if you want to win. You really have to look for several situations where you can make a few moves and add some chips to your stack. 

If you've played enough MTT's you'll appreciate what I'm saying and what I'm about to say. You can play a standard tight / aggressive style game in MTT's and occasionally sneak into some money, and if you get super lucky (which means that you win almost all of your coin flips), you may even win a MTT. The likelihood of this occurring however is quite slim. So what can you do?

You have to take some chances and make a few moves in order to acquire some chips so that you're only move isn't limited to push or not push. Obviously the less times you have to put your entire tournament at risk, the less chance you'll be knocked out of the tournament. So almost counter intuitively you have to take some calculated risks at critical times in the tournament. 

The perfect time to look to make moves is in the early "middle stages" of the tournament, right before the tournament becomes an all-in short stack fest. During this time the average stack size in relation to the total of the blinds will be a multiple of ~30 (Take the average stack size of the tournament and divided by the total of the big and small blind). It's very sight and tournament dependent, but commonly this will occur sometime after the first break. 

At this time the tournament blind structure still has some maneuverability, and people aren't limited to only pushing all-in. This is when you should look to make your move and get some extra chips. A great way to do this is to look for opportunities to employ a "squeeze play". Ideally this is what you want to look for in order to execute this play properly:

1. Someone with an approximately average size stack (that hasn't been an absolute rock), makes a reasonable sized raise before the flop. Another person with an average stack calls the raise and the action folds to you. 

2. You also have a somewhat average or above chips stack and have been playing solid poker. If you are below average, but won't be commited to the pot if you raise, then that's fine as well.

3. You now come over the top of the initial raiser for around 3.5x the initial raise size. Cards really don't matter.

4. Ideally if your first opponent folds, then the remaining opponent will fold as well. IF however one of them calls, then you bet 1/2 the pot size no matter what comes on the flop (or if stack sizes are close, then push). If you bet 1/2 the pot and were called, you're usually best to give up because you won't have enough left in your stack to force anyone to fold. Typically it's best to abandon ship and keep a slim chance of a comeback later.

Things you want to avoid when making this play:

1. The initial person who raises has been playing extremely tight.

2. Either the raiser or caller of the raise are complete maniacs.

3. Be cautious if the raise comes from the UTG player and it's a fairly small raise (unless this raiser has been opening a lot of pots).

If the play doesn't work, don't get discouraged. Just continue to work on your reads and looking for opportunities to make these moves. Making these plays will make your tournament life more volatile, but the percentage that you find yourself at the final table, and even winning will increase dramatically. Good luck!

John Anhalt is a poker coach and owner of www.pokerzion.com