Not necessarily. Its often a good to ply this more aggressively as other players are trying just that, to make the money -- playing too conservative, giving up the advantage to move ahead just trying to sneak into the money. There was an article about this a couple of years ago in Cardplayer that talked about this -- and how you can take advantage of this. But everyone plays differently. But it all depends - like how many more players for the money and what is the bottom rung of the pay scale.

You have to play for the top prize, its essentially a freeroll for 7-8million (dont know what the top prize will be this year). For that you need to accumulate chips to get to the top. Sneaking into the money to win a couple of bux? Not for me.