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Here's a very contrived but alternate scenario. Say in the first few hands of the tournament, you and 8 other people double up. Then by some bizarre coincidence, within the next few hands all of you are moved to the same table. So now you have a table full of 20,000 chip stacks very early in a 10,000 starting stack tournament. In *this* situation I feel that your EV drops as per Mason's conjecture... now you no longer have an advantage over the rest of your table, you have to worry about any one of the stacks busting you out of the tournament in any one hand.

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IMHO, this is a great point. As others have hinted at in previous posts, and I'm inclined to agree, the most hay is to be made from the medium stacks rather than the short stacks or big stacks.

If you get stuck at a table where you are 2x the rest of the field, but everyone at the table is at least 1.1x you, then this is a tough row to hoe for a couple of reasons. 1) The chances of this table breaking up or people getting pulled from it are unlikely for at least a little while. 2) Players at the other tables will find much easier going as they catch and pass players at your table.

Even if you are unquestionably the best player at the table, your expectation may be reduced to almost nothing. It is not unlike a one-table tournament within a bigger tournament, because the whole group is likely to be saddled with each other for some time, and possibly only one or two players will move forward from there in a healthy enough state to make the money.