NL Bubble Question..

[Senor Choppy]

Small tournament, 6 of us left, top 5 get paid. 40% for 1st on down to ~9% for 5th. I'm one of the two chip leaders with ~T9k, (the other guy has maybe 50 chips more than I do and the rest of the table is around 4-5k each).

The only confrontation with this person was a hand where he raised from middle position for T500, I raised all-in for around T5000 with AKs, someone cold called from the blind with JJ and he folded. (AK was good that hand).

Hand in question, blinds are 50 & 100, I have AKo on the button, other guy with T9k raises to T500. The blinds will easily devour the loser if we both move in. I'm always gunning for the top few spots, so I opted to move-in and he did the same (results below).

My thinking was since he'd be out too if he calls and loses, this is a very rough call for him to make even with something like queens, and even if he does call, if I double up and knock this guy out, 2nd or better is a lock with around half of the total chips. Finally, his raise amount was standard for him and he should be taking shots like this at the blinds fairly often with most of the table in defense mode.

Should I worry more about just making the money (all I'm concerned with is EV, not the joy of winning small tournaments or whatever)? Any advice is welcome.

Results: he called and his jacks held up.

[SossMan]

There's only T650 to win. Like you said, there aren't that many hands that he could call you with. More times than not, you will take the pot down here preflop, but the times when he calls, it will be a race 50% of the time, a 2:1 dog about 25%, and a big dog (AA), another 25% of the time, in my estimation.
So the answer depends on how low a pair he's willing to call you with.
Why not just raise him back to like T2000. He'll drop all of his steals, and come over the top w/ anything that has you at best a 50-50. I don't think he's coming back over the top w/ anything you dominate. There's much less risk here.