Tourney thoughts and questions

[Van_Broke]

I am mostly a cash game player but once in a while I play a tourney or SNG. I cannot see how good players have much of an advantage in these compared to cash games, maybe you guys could enlighten me. I will use Pokerstars for reference which is apparently one of the better structured sites.

So often I see tourneys where you catch absolutely nothing for the first two blind levels. Maybe you have limped in late position with a couple small pairs or connectors and missed and you have a stack around 1200. So lets say the blinds are at 25/50 and you look down at AK. You raise it up to 200, get two callers. Flop comes down AT5, looks pretty sweet, you bet out 400 into the pot and get one caller. You are committed to this hand as far as I can tell, you pretty much have to move in no matter what the next card is. So basically your whole tourney comes down to a hand where you have to go all the way with TPTK, and could be up against 2p, or a set, or get outdrawn. Whereas in a cash game you have plenty of room to get away from this hand if need be. Would you guys agree with that?

Second, I find late in tourneys are nothing but all-in fests. And I don't blame the players, christ the average stack is usally less then 20bb, and the median stack is even less than that. The majority of the players have an M (Harrington) of less then 10. Very rarely do I see any room for postflop play here except in the odd unraised pot. This part just seems like race, race, race, dominating once in a while, and try not to be dominated.

Third, how important are notes really given the above? To me it would seem that notes on how players play early in a tourney when you have a little breathing room would be useful in future tourneys, and later in a tourney having notes on a player about what he is capable of pushing and calling with would be useful in future tourneys, but I see no use of early tourney notes to be used later in that particular tourney. The play is just too different. So do you guys take notes to be used in future tourneys, or later in that particualr tourney, or both?