Question re: EV allins in the first hour of a live tournament

[GambleAB]

Bear with me on this one.....

I am putting a friend into a decent sized buyin land based event next month. The field will be right around 100 people. Starting stack 10k, one hour levels, top9 pay out (may be top 18 if a few more then 100 show up, but 10th-18th will basically be buyin back).

Here is the scenario. I know that my friend is at LEAST the 3rd best player that will be in the tournament. There are 2 other people that are comparable in skill to him, but I'm not sure if they have ever played a live event, or one as high a buyin as this, or even anything with these long levels, so it wouldn't be a stretch to say that my friend would be the best player in this event. I was going over some specific situations with him just now, preparing him for higher-level tournament thinking, when for the first time in my life I came across the old "would you fold aces" scenario.

Stop.

Listen.

Seriously.

Here is my contention: If you get kings in the first level, raise to 100 (blinds start at 25-25), and someone pushes allin after you, I said to him "you have to fold that". He disagreed. I said that even if he said "I'm allin" and turned over jacks you STILL had to fold this. He reminded me that that would basically be the same situation as if you had aces and someone did the same thing (way way overbet allin preflop). MY contention was that the EV of you being in the tournament...as the most highly skilled player there....at 10k in chips is going to be higher than your EV of having 20k in chips 80% of the time and not being there the other 20% of the time. He disagreed, and said that you should ALWAYS play aces allin pre, and 99% of the time play kings allin pre. I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.


The readers digest version: 100-125 person live tournament with a very slow structure, filled with all online players. You are the best person in the tournament. Is it worth it, in the first level, to play a pot for all of your chips preflop, even if you KNOW you have the best hand? I say no, because against these players, you will chip up regardless by playing smaller pots and outplaying them over the course of the 2-3 days, and the risk of busting out 20% of the time isn't worth the reward of doubling up 80% of the time. You will more than likely get the chips anyway, it will just take a little bit more work.

Any thoughts?