Whats the move?

What's the payout strucutre?

Yikes. 4x the buyin for 5th place? I think this swings our decision to a call or a fold preflop. With 3 stacks with an M of 1-2, sometimes you just have to not bubble. This is the antithesis to the advice I normally post, but here I think it is correct. Call and push a favourable flop, or just fold it here and survive to the money.

Anything above double your entry fee gives you pause to consider playing tight. 3x your entry fee or more is a no-brainer to me.

30 people buy-in for $10 and the guaranteed payout is $500?

What is the position of the smaller stacks? If they are immediately after the large stack, I would pick a better spot and use my chips to steal their blinds while you are on the the bubble.

With your chip stack, I actually like the seat position of the aggressive large stack unless he has a tendency to come over on top of people often. If he were sitting in front of you, he would make it difficult for you to push first. But now that he's behind you, you can push first and attack the blinds. And the players with weaker nerves in front of you will be less apt to steal for fear of the large stack calling or coming over the top on the button. But you have no such fear and you will use their fear to attack.

I'm not necessarily waiting for a better hand but a spot where there is some chance that I won't get called by the big stack. He may be pushing aggressively but a large stack making a min-raise from UTG will probably call you and you know you are coinflipping at best. He's already demonstrated a willingness to call a re-raise. I would guess that his odds of calling your all-in bet is close to 100%. I think if he was serious about mucking to an all-in bet, he would have raised a little bit more to make coming over the top a little less inviting.

If you decide to wait, there is probably enough fear of bubbling out that you should be able to steal your way into the money first and then take a coinflip for 1st place.

When I am that close to the bubble and the blinds are very high relative to the average stacks, I don't think in terms of EV. Since I only really have one move, I try to figure out who's afraid and who's greedy.

I fold for sure. The BB is priced in for most hands and he's probably going to call. So let the chip leader take him out and collect his 1200. That extra 1200 in the chip leader's stack doesn't really affect you much at all. In fact, it's better for him to have it then other stacks closer to your own, IMO. Even if the BB wins and doubles up, his chip stack poses about the same threat to yours. It might even be easier to steal his blinds if he now thinks he has a fighting chance of making the money.

Now, if the BB only had 600 left, I might call and let the BB play. This is assuming that the chip leader is not an idiot and he won't try to bluff a dry side pot. If there is some risk that he would bluff a dry side pot, I'm not going to play.

Basically, to win from your chip position, you need to get lucky at some point. But you will need to be less lucky if you can steal a couple of blinds and antes.

One caveat. If the remaining players are all solid and have no fear of bubbling out, I just go ahead and push in and make my stand right then and