$22, ITM, AK, giant stack conundrum

Yeah, playing to win the tournament AK is probably your best shot here.

[tigerite]

Put it this way, if I was the short stack, I'd love to see you call with AK here if the big stack pushed.

I meant I'd push AK here if the short stack were to go all in after I called the big stacks raise, rather not risk my tournament on what is essentially a drawing hand when someone has almost 1/3 of my stack, but with the extra money from the short stack in there if he goes all-in I'd be glad to do it because then I'd be in a much better position to take 1st.

[mosdef]

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This is not the bubble. I definately push this since you are saying he was loose. You already have third secure, push it and get his chips.

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This is a classic mistake people make. ITM is a mini bubble of its own with payouts of 0.75/0.25/0

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yeah, but a big part of the effectiveness of bubble pushing is that people fold out of fear of finishing 4th. the fear often vanishes when they're in the money so it really doesn't work with the same way as a "mini-bubble", whether it should or not is not relevant. so you need to adjust your play ITM to reflect that your opponents will call with a much wider range than they will with 4 or 5 players left. while i agree with you that we should think of ITM as a fight for .75/.25/0, we shouldn't play it as aggressively as another bubble since calling ranges are wider. irrationally wider, but wider.

obviously it's all stack and opponent dependent too. a common exception to my statement above would be 3 handed with even stacks. many opponents will play fairly tight in this situation.