Before the big stack on the bubble?

basically it depends a lot. you shouldn't attack the bigstack a lot unless the guy is really tight. If the bigstack is aggressive he should harass the other shorty quite a lot so you should just be a little patient and play abc. dont shove too much into the bigstack and look for an opportunity to call the shorty(if he's aggressive enough). If the shorty is tight, you might get a walk sometime, so you should just wait. If the bigstack doesn't harrass enough, you will have to make some loose pushes from the button.

if other guy has 4000, it depends more on him. if the midstack is tight and waiting for you to bust, you'll just have to loosen up and try to steal a lot. if the mid guy is aggressive, you have to be more patient because a clash between them greatly increases your equity.

What kind of ranges are we talking here? For example shoving into a semi loose big stack from the sb? Or from the btn? And what range for calling the other shorty?

Other question is... Should I really be so tight when 2nd place only pays 1.5x the buy in? It almost doesn't seem worth it, though still feels like shit to come 3rd.

I'm not familiar with that structure, take the nash range and adjust.

Hi, Noz03!

I would ask you to give us a few possibilities of how the stack sets are.

Say it goes as this: BTN(you)-2k chips
SB-2k chips
BB-8k chips

or BTN-8k chips
SB-2k
BB-2k

etc, etc. As a general idea you want to be calling/pushing tighter into the big stack because of how risk averse u are vs him. And push/call looser vs your direct opponent. I assume the pay out is 70:30? That means that your main goal should be to aim for first place, but again- there will be ICM tax that you need to consider.

Nash, SnG Wiz and ICM explorer are great programs that will give you all the info you need in the future when u find yourself in these spots.

Cheers!