[ElGod]

I always play my best poker (as i'm sure most peope do) with a medium to large stack in the mid and end stages of a tournament. however, I've recently been having big problems in building a large stack early in tournaments.

Recently i have been played several live games at our universitys poker society and have found it difficult accumulating chips against the players. the society consists mainly of about 30% good players, and some of these guys are realy good, then the rest really really bad, lots of basically beginners who constantly need to be prompted to post their blinds e.t.c. These players i find impossible to read and seem to never fold, EVER! they stick in pots with draws or simply if they have just an ace high even when there is never any reasons to justify their decisions. As such i have found myself in a lot of confusion and tightened up dramatically only playing medium to strong pairs and big aces or occasionally kq e.t.c whenver the time seemed right.

i have had little success in the last 10 or so tournaments mostly going out with a good hand such as AK where i've not had a big enough stack to defend my hand and make my opponent fold preflop, ofter losing to a mediocre hand (last night i lost AK to Kj which made a straight as i could only re-raise the initial raiser another 500 when the pot was already 3000). Either this or ive just got so short stacked and have had to push.

Anyone got any tips on playing against really weak players? an example of the type of player i'm referring to is one who limps in every pot, if you raise they call, if you went all in, they would also probably call (this really bugs me, they wil call the big blind for say $50, and they call a $500 raise? what? and they arn't slow playing aces or making another such play, if they had aces they would probanly move all in with a huge grin on their face!). after the flop they will bet $100 to a pot of $3000, i.e plays which are almost funny. Do you continue to make standard plays such as continuation bets e.t.c if you miss the flop and bluff against them? of just give up the pot if you don't have any hand as you know they will call you to the end with 9 high. Or is it a case of playing as many hands as cheaply as possible until you make a monster and reel them in (this is pretty impossible when the other 30% of players are very good though)?]

I'm not sure if i'm just looking too far into this and should just play my normal game. i seem to have drifted away from my initial topic title aswell. but any tips on playing againts really weak players aswell as building a big stack early on would be nice to hear