[slik]

I study the game intently all the time, and used to play tournaments regularly, but I haven't played one in quite some time; hopefully other posters can confirm / reject my opinion.

I agree with you that pushing 56s is better than KJo, but you probably have to do some math to figure it out quantitatively. FWIIW, the play needs to be significantly +cev to be +EV, given the gross payout jump in the final table. Also, more borderline hands like AJ-AQ and 88-99 get me into trouble in these sort of spots, that still confuse me.

I guess if only the top 5% of hands call you, and there are 5 players to act after you, all 5 will fold 77% of the time. Let's say the other 23% of the time that you're called you're a 3-1 underdog to simplify things.

0.77 when they fold you have 12k + 55k = 67k
0.23 when they call and you win you have 55k + 12k + 55k = 122k
0.23 when they call and you lose you have 0

so pushing has an expectation of:
[.77 * 67] + [0.23 * 0.25 * 122] + [0.23 * 0.75 * 0]= 51.6 + 7 = 58.6

So pushing has a higher expectation of folding (58.6k > 55k) under these assumptions, but +cev is not necessarily +EV because of the gross payout change. I wonder at what point cev and EV are both positive.