Kzk, i ran your three hands.
KQo in the big blind - interestingly, running the
ICM Nash Calculator Results and running sngwiz with sb's range at 100% produce two different results, albeit not by much (sngwiz says 19.9%). they both say call, but i think with any inclination that sb isn't pushing atc at you, you're letting go of KQ.
the next hand is an atc push if villain is calling only top 33% or tighter.
ICM Nash Calculator Results says push 43, get called by 40
AJo -
ICM Nash Calculator Results has us calling when utg is pushing 91%. i'm trying to think how wide i'd be pwning with that set up, and it's probably nowhere near 90%. my guess is i'm pwning with closer to 40%, possibly even tighter considering how the short stacks are playing. and i'm probably typical. even then, AJo is still enough to call, although not by much.
for those of you who want to see the equity calculations:
let us assume utg+1 will bust on his big blind. in that case, our stack would be worth $18.45 at end of tournament if we fold here.
if we call here, let's say bb overcalls with top 5%. in that case, 95% of the time, our equity at EOT would be $19.35 (ajo has 60.13% equity vs top 40%), 5% of the time, our equity would be $10.22 (ajo has 25% equity vs top 40% and top 5%), for a total of $18.89. and would be higher in practice due to the fact that we'd be a virtual lock to steal the blinds on the next hand the times we double up. so, basically, eqp is at least $.50 better than folding, and often up to like 3 bucks better. qed. who wants to check my math?