Checking it down - When to start

Haven't posted in a while - the first of the semester is always a bit hectic.

So here's something I've been gnawing on for a while - I know what a few of the poker books say on the subject, but I'd like to get some feedback from players in the online poker community because I suspect not everyone reads poker books and certainly not everyone uses the strategies suggested in the books.

So, you're in a MTT (generally FR or low-buy-in for me) - let's say it's past the all-in with A-crap donkey stage -- sometime after the first break.

Player A is short-stacked and goes all-in, and 2 additional players (B and C) call, but there is no side pot pre-flop.

The flop comes and hits neither player B or C, or at best one of them makes third or 2nd pair or a flush/str8 draw.

At what point in the tourney do you check it down unless you hit a big enough hand that you are fairly certain you can take out Player A?

Generally, if we are more than twice the bubble (say, 27 players get ITM, then if there are more than 54 players left), I might try to push the other non-short out to increase my chances of taking the pot. Inside the double-bubble number, I'll usually check it down unless I hit pretty well. Definitely inside the bubble I will do that to increase the odds of taking out the short player and making everyone else move up - it's simply good strategy.

Over the last few weeks I've folded to a bet by Player C (assuming I'm Player B) after the flop because it's obvious that he hit -- only to find that he has no pair and no draw and Player A then triples up. I want to get a sense of what folks think and how they play this situation because I'm obviously working on a bad assumption, at least a significant portion of the time.

Having a chip lead can be a nice time to get some free chips from when people expect you to check it down.

Let's say the blinds are 500/1000, and the stacks are:

Villian: 3500
Hero (SB): 50,000
Villian2 (BB): 17,000

Villian goes all in for 3500. We call. Villian2 also calls at this point cos he's getting a good price, and wants to knock the other guy out.

What do we do on the flop if we hit? We bet! Villian2 will probably grumble about saying he thought we were going to check it down and then fold, not wanting to hurt his chipstack anymore. We've now got ourselves into a pot where we can knock out villian and there's some free chips in there also. If Villian triples up, well it doesn't particulary bother us, we've still got a big stack. It'll probably bother Villian2 though, who's just lost quite a few chips and found someone else now not far behind him. If we win then Villian is out, Villian2 has lost quite a few chips, and we're an even bigger chip leader.

You can still do this on the bubble as well. Chip leader on bubble means you can steal a lot of blinds whilst the short stacks try to hang on, so you're not too fussed about the bubble bursting.

I've found that few people ever check it down online, even one away from the money. You have a better chance they will do it in the higher buy-in games. We were one away from the money on the $3 rebuy and the other person went all-in with a 4 6 off-suit even though the flop was face cards. Thankfully he lost the hand to the player who we should have checked down to, I folded the best hand.