Before the final table, if you have plenty of chips left to survive, you still want to think about entering the pot for a raise when you are more likely than not to have the best hand and a slightly larger range. The easy rule of thumb is count the number of players left to act plus yourself and divide ONE by that number. This is the hand range you play. For example, if you are on the button you should play the top 1/3 hands and look at them as most likely the best. Rather than try to aggressively exploit players like you do all tournament, in this spot, you merely seek to go over the top with again... the best hand. You are going to give credit to your opponent and fold enough to basically break even. In other words, if opponent bets 3 times your bet, you can fold your bet 3 times and on the 4th go all in and win everything back. In other words, take your original hand range and divide it by 4 for a standard 3x range. So if you play 33% of hands and the blind plays back at you, wait for the top 33/4=8.25% of hands to play.
I actually am very okay with being much more patient than that both in the all in front and in the initial raise front. The reason being you can coast your way to the final table, pick better spots, avoid all ins and still have a very good chance of making it. Many times in many parts of the tournament, I will approach a slow gear. Probably will enter this slow gear after I make the money. This slow gear is about understanding how long I could wait if I only were to bet with my best hands and developing a strategy around that.
In this case, you basically want to just determine even considering the rates that the blinds go up how many "true hands left" you have before you are blinded down to nothing. Really probably take away 10 of those hands since you don't really want it to come down to desperation where everyone calls you and the double up only puts you back to where you are now in terms of overall chips. This might be between 20 and 40 hands left. Say it's 30 for example. Then take 1/30 and that's your call all in range. You should be willing to limp in, raise, or reraise with half of that or 1/15. You might adjust slightly for position since you will have more information preflop after everyone else has act. You still have to realize this is a rule of thumb so if the tightest poker player in the world goes all in you may still fold, and if the loosest one does you may still fold. As things happen and your chips diminish or grow, your percentage must be adjusted to reflect recent data. Also, you may pick some spots to play the player rather than your cards and just try to steal every now and then, but at least with this baseline you know the maximum you can wait, and you can maybe push with twice the hand range you could wait for.
Please be aware that as the tournament gets short handed at 3 tables left and 2 tables left, the calculation on the amount of hands left changes quite a bit since you will pay a lot more blinds at each blind level and the cost per blind level for folding basically doubles. As such, there is an akward phase where you may want to come off the slow gear every now and then.
FINALLY the ULTIMATE slow gear that is downright nitty is the final table gear with a full table... If you have a healthy stack, this is where you make a lot of money from just sitting on the sideline, letting some players do a lot of work and get all their chips back later with a single pot or two at an elevated blind level.
So you will stick to pocket JJ or better, and maybe TT and AK in late position when not facing action. You might fold TT and JJ and AK when facing a raise, and QQ to a reraise. In reality I doubt most people will possess the ability to resist some marginally better hands than that, but it's a good perspective to start with planning. I believe this strategy was used by Helmuth to coach someone from the final table to a WSOP top 3 finish.
Now when it gets down to 5 players left or 3 you may come out to play and widen the range, but really what you are looking to do is double up with a monster chance of winning and THEN come out of your super tight mode and go back to bullying the table. Helmuth probably would only have you open the raising range slightly, but I think your tight image will REALLY pay off and allow you to grind away a very large chunk of chips with just a handful of blind steals at the elevated levels and maybe a decent sized pot.
You really make money as players bust themselves but that's still not the goal of this. The goal is to have basically a low varience strategy that allows you to just hang on. If your opponents are raising and such you might get a 3xBB steal plus 1.5BB plus about a big blind worth of antes for 5.5. Since you will be folding all but 1/35 hands you basically pay for over 3 rotation which will cost you just over 4.5 big blinds plus 3 rounds of antes. You win probably somewhere between 2.5big blinds and 5.5 big blinds with the opportunity for perhaps much more... EXCEPT the blinds after 30 hands will on average rise.
How much? that depends upon structure, but a 25% rise twice makes sense. This takes 2.5big blinds to 5.5 up to 4 big blinds to 8.50 with potential for more. Since you lose about 8 bit blinds this is a slightly unprofitable strategy if you don't get any more value from your hand than a steal. That is perfectly acceptable since everyone will reduce the size in big blinds of their stack and many resort to risking all their chips. Throw in a single additional steal after or just before the big hand, and you will add 4 big blinds to that total and you're better than break even. Considering the significantly tight image you will create by folding will give you a license to steal later, it is likely very worth the downside. Afterall if you have say 40 big blinds, that is way more extra room than you need anyways, so just keep a slow, patient, low varience strategy to start with.
This just is much better than the strategy of potentially going bust just to slightly increase the chance of winning.
Ideally if you could you would have a strategy that just does a little better than break even at no risk of going broke, but with the blind structures for online tournaments that is probably being optomistic. Nevertheless, since the play will go from 10 or 9 handed at the final table to short handed in a hurry, and then you have to pay much more to see 10 hands of play, that is when you can after a few rotations of playing only marginally looser, start to really go for a few key major steals in large pots and drastically open up your range.
Realistically you will start with a strategy that may be worse than break even (or much, much better than break even if opponents slip up), then kick in one that is very exploitative throwing out plenty of small bets to win lots of small pots and then scaling back a bit again, but not nearly as much as before. If you get yourself too short stack you may get all in and called with very much the best of it, and walk away a big chip leader. If not, don't worry.
The goal may require you to really strike and make a steal attempt and follow it through or reraise steal all in with a completely terrible hand. You really have nothing to lose at this point so using your tight image to make an utterly insane move for a huge stack of chips is great.
What you want to do next is fun. Find a way to maintain chips for awhile, note the people you can really steal from. you may want to keep the short stacks alive so you can continue to steal from the medium stacks. As long as you are accumulating chips while they try to fold their way up to second, you at some point actually will take the lead. The chip leader may try to knock the short stacks out and lose. If not, don't worry, just keep chipping away. It won't take too many extra steals plus some good monster bluffs or just extracting a bit of value out of a decent hand before you are the chip leader. Even if you get down to 2 handed heads up, Just keep with the min raise on the button and avoid out of position and keep aggression on. Push if you have to.
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