Playing Poker Again

My second live tournament experience went well. I showed up at the casino at 6:15 afor the 7:00Pm tournament. I placed my name on the list and was number 20. We ended up having 54 players tonight. They broke us up into two groups of 27. We would play until we reached 20 and then the next group would play until they reached 20. I was in the first group. I was in seat 9 next to the dealer. Having not played in a live tournament since February I wanted to play tight and would not use the all-in like last time. I wanted to get into the main tournament of 40 people. I was able to play and win a few hands to build my chip count. I even threw away AK at one point. My best hand of the night was when we were down to 21 players. I was dealt AA. I called to see a flop and the player in seat 3 went all-in. I called immediately. We turned over the cards and he had Q9. The flop came xx9, the turn was x and the river was an x. I had eliminated the 21st person. We were down able to go on break until the next 27 were down to 20. We played for an hour to eliminate 7 people. The next group played 1 1/2 hours to get down to 20. The 40 people are now set to finish the tournament. The payout was for 1st to 5th. During the rest of my time at the table I was not getting anything to play. My 11,100 chip count was starting to dwindle down. I picked up a hand A8 and figured I needed to move in and the flop came A67. I moved all-in and one person called me. He had A10 and the next two cards did not help me. I went out 26/54. I have to keep from going all-in and learn to stop playing the Aces with a low kicker. If I would have just raised or called with the hand to see the next card I could have remained in the tournament.