A unique late stage situation I'm lost on.

[Zizz]

During the pokerstars million guaranteed this last sunday, I was faced with a situation that left me a little confused. There were certain times that my chip position in the tournament was top 10 and I was big stack of my table with everyone desperate to stay alive. However, at the same time my stack was still relatively low when taking in account the growing blinds and antes. Here is an example of one of my tables where this situation presented itself late in the tourney.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t16000 (8 handed) converter

UTG+1 (t74454)
MP1 (t68268)
MP2 (t84640)
CO (t128727)
Button (t55072)
Hero (t154942)
BB (t132261)
UTG (t44664)

While I felt I needed chips to keep my head above water still, everyone else was even more desperate. Has anyone encountered these type of situations and lost like I am? In smaller field MTT's I've played I've never been put into this position. If anyone has experience with this stage of a tournament any advice would be appreciated.

[uclabruinz]

You have to really, really, really, really pay attention to all table dynamics and your own image and go after those blinds/antes as much as possible. Assigning ranges on pushers and potential callers is crucial.

You are a little pissed to see another pretty big stack on your immediate left, but watch him very carefully and try to beat up on the four players that follow him when you are in late to middle position.

[beenben]

You can try to use your stack to bully the table when in position with some type of cards. Try raising to 2.5x the BB instead of 3x. Try not to do this against the other big stacks- CO and BB and also don't do it against the small stacks unless have a hand that you don't mind getting called with. It's also a little hard to give advice without info. re reads or hole cards or position.

[NoahSD]

I don't like giving general answers, but this is a very general question, so basically, raise preflop a lot unless the table makes this impossible.

As the big stack, you should be scary as hell to everyone at the table.