There is definitely a big difference between correct strategy when you are playing cash games and when you are playing tournament poker. A lot of good cash game players have problems to adapt to tournament strategy an never succeeds in tourneys.
Tournaments looks a lot like cash games but there is one big difference, sooner or later you and your opponents are getting short stacked. And this is when you have to change strategy.
In cash games most players are buying in for 100 times the big blind or so. And if they loose and are getting short stacked they just re buy.

When you play in a freeze out tourney you cant do that. The first rounds in a multi table tournament are not that different from cash games. You start with 100-200 times the big blind in tourney chips. In the first tree or four rounds it is correct to play normal tight aggressive cash strategy. But the blinds are increasing every ten or fifteen minutes and if you don’t accumulating chips in the same high pace, you are getting more and more short stacked. And when this happens you have to make adjustments in your strategy.
Lots of players continues to play the same tight game and after a while they have blinded away so much of their stack that they don’t have much chance to recover. The more short stacked you are the more loose aggressive you have to play.

In his book Harrington on Holdém, Dan Harrington writes about something he calls M and the Zone System. M is your stack divided with the small + the big blind, it shows how many rounds it will take for you to be blinded away. There are five zones. In the green zone you have an M of 20 plus. It means you can still play any style you want, tight, aggressive or super aggressive. As you descend through the zones, you have to play more and more aggressive. And in the red zone, with an M of 1-5 you only have one move left, all in. If no one have called or raised in front of you, it’s correct to move all in with any two cards.

I recommend anybody who is serious about becoming a good tournament player to read this book. Harrington have published tree excellent book about No limit tournament poker, Harrington on Hold'em vol 1-3, you need them all.

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