when do you push with any two cards?

[purerealm]

Last night I played in a 19 person tournament that had blinds raised every 15 min, with no cap. Needless to say at the final table it got pretty intense and I found myself pushing with hands like Q8 suited, I think I had 3x BB, but then again, so did about 6 other people. Well, BB who also happens to be chipstack leader flips over KK.

His third king comes and it happens to make my straight. whew, manage to finish in 3rd.

[Runner Runner]

I will push with any 2 when I have a reasonable chance to steal the blinds and I have less then 10 big blinds. Now, with that being said, I will obviously need to have an excellent chance to steal the blinds if I have 10 BBs and I will require only some chance to steal if I have 3BBs. I will also consider how many hands I have left before I run out of fold equity. When considering my chances of stealing I have to factor in (a) the # of people left to act (b) there likeliness of calling me (c) my current table image.

If I have less then 3 BBs and am playing against reasonable opponents, I will assume that a steal will not work and I will push with the first hand that has value or I will push behind a big stack's raise that is likely to force the blinds out so that if I get lucky allin against the big stack, I will triple or quadruple up.

[Lottery Larry]

"I will require only some chance to steal if I have 3BBs"

Why would you need ANY chance to steal? I'd only need some reasonable cards to push. You're losing half of your stack on the next round, and the blinds might be moving up.