In one of my more recent big tournaments i placed 16th out of 316 people. it was a $3.30 buyin so i won about 8 bucks. not huge but good enough to be happy with myself. the way i play usually is i try to see as many flops as possible early on when the blinds are low. that way if i take down a couple big pots i can play tight without worrying about not having enough chips at crunch time. and once the bubble burst i raise pretty much everytime preflop and usually people respect me. Thats how i play the majority of the time.