I'm in a tournament with only four players remaining. In the standings I'm third, but I may well lose my last game against the player in fourth place. This means he will go through to the final. What happens though if I'm higher in the standings than him at the end?

Here is a link to the page

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/players.html?sortby=standings&id=6653

You wont be eliminated i believe. You will stay third and when all the games are complete i believe 4th will be eliminated.. im not sure though

You will get eliminated. Otherwise he wouldn't have gone to that point with 6 win while 5th place has 9 and he won against gateway2shane in round 5 and he had a better overall record than him with 7 wins to his 6.
So your best bet would be to win this game and you'd both go through.

I think the reason he is higher is because he had two rounds not having to play against anyone, so automatically went through. Not sure why that was, seems a bit unfair to me. I've had to play an extra 4 games!