[jskinn04]

There were four people left and you were the frontrunner to get second, but if you just sit on your stack and one of your other two opponents doubles up at some point, you're looking at playing yourself into third place instead of second.

In this situation, your stack was only good enough for a little more than two trips around the table. When you pick up good hands like AJ in a dire situation like that, you've got to be leaning heavily towards moving all-in. The factor that would swing my decision this time is that the small stack was in the big blind, which was more than half his stack. You're likely to either steal his blind (which is a great result because he'll be out the door in no time) or get a call from an inferior hand that cannot break you even if he's draws out. It's just bad luck that the big chip leader had a hand with which he wanted to get involved. In my opinion, your all-in move was a winning play.