Me and a few friends are thinking of all playing in a $10+1 MTT online at some point in the near future (not bothered about cash, just a kind of "see who comes the highest" fun thing). I've never played an MTT before, so can you guys explain the best strategies to me please?

Ive final tabled about 15 times including second place twice (one should have been first but my pocket aces got cracked by pocket 5s) this is 180 man ive cashed in some massive tourneys but nothin worthy of any note. My main strategy is to play as tight as possible in the early stages, and play as many decent hands from late position as possible. Watch the table and you'll see some really aggressive players have a look at the sort of hands theyre showing down, if they keep playing crap pick spots with them when you have position and slowly build your stack. You will see some people constantly all in and growing massive stacks, dont worry about them your main concern is getting to the bubble, yeah if you can build a nice stack on the way then go for it. As you get toward the bubble most players generally tighten up, those guys with the massive stacks, some of them will be genuinely good players the rest will start to rapidly lose their stacks as the better more patient players destroy them. Once you make the bubble a lot of people think wahey ive made a few quid ill go mad, and start playing really silly hands so this can also be a good way to pick up a lot of extra chips. Also when the blinds start to get high its worth stealing from position, just be prepared to get away from it if your played back at. Thats the way i play them others may disagree but thats what works for me.

Sounds like very sensible advice.
What do you do against the maniacs who are going all-in at the start? If it's preflop is it worth a stab with a premium hand? And what about if they do it postflop? Wait until you have the nuts and take them out?

Cool, thanks.

Do these three things

Read Harrington on Hold'em I
Read Harrington on Hold'em II
Browse the MTT hand analysis area

OK, I think I saw those books before on Amazon. I'll have another look thx.

Unless you're lucky enough to double up a few times early on, you're going to spend a significant portion of the tournament short-stacked. As a general rule, you can assume you're critically short-stacked if you have less than about 12xBB (some will say 10, others 15...), though it gets more complicated once there are antes. The point is that once you're short-stacked, you can't make a normal raise preflop without committing yourself to the pot. You see a lot of bad players raise to 3xBB, get called, and then check-fold the flop when they don't like it. Those are chips that would have been better spent waiting for a stronger hand.

Once you're short-stacked, you should be pushing or folding pre-flop until you're no longer short-stacked, either because you've stolen enough blinds through pushes that you can now start doing the regular stack strategy of stealing with a normal raise in late position, or because you got called and doubled up.

A good general guideline for what hands to push is to think about whether it's the best hand you're likely to see in the next two or three orbits if you're barely short-stacked, or in the next orbit if you're really short-stacked, like 6-7xBB or less. All you can buy with tournament chips is time, as they say, and if you wait until your stack's cut in order to find a hand that you can double up with, then you're just treading water until someone sucks out on you.

Of course, you push lighter in late position, tighter in early position, and tighter if there are any limpers in front of you. Your range to call other people's all-ins should also be much tighter than your own pushing range, as your main goal in pushing is to steal blinds, not to get involved in a race.

Not to blow my own trumpet but for beginner to intermediate tournament play, I did an interview with Wesley Whybrew (tightagressive from this forum) about tournament play according to opponents and stack sizes that is quite good for strat content.

OK, guess that's blowing TA's trumpet too.

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Part Two