Okay so I tried to grunch, but when I saw all the pro commentary I just had to read it. I hope this isn't too influenced by it, or at least if it is, it's more educated and less circle jerk.

I don't like the open unless you are able to open every hand for a period of time without any confrontation whatsoever. There are definitely dynamics where you can get away with stealing literally any two cards for stretches of hands until the control is lost, but I don't think they happen very often, nor do I think we necessarily need to force them because we can easily end up building big pots, and if our post flop frequencies are in anyway wrong, you're going to end up on a lot of turns with a lot of 7bb-10bb pots with very little equity in them. On top of that, your post flop frequencies could be perfect and yet you'd still stand to lose because youll have way too many hands in your range when you get to the flop, which means youll have too many when you get to the turn, which means youll have too many when you get to the river. If you somehow correct this on an earlier street, you're giving away chips with the open at all. It doesn't necessarily take someone adjusting to you for you to lose overall when you open this wide preflop because theyll just have hands that don't fold enough of the time. 

It being a KO tourney theoretically shifts the benefits of stealing in some manner because $50 is 1/3 of a buy-in for x% of your stack. This is more like…impactful way earlier in the game when having say a double stack doesn't mean you're getting to the money, but  x% of your stack can be risked in spots for guaranteed 1/3 buy-ins. When you're deep and closer to the money, I don't think that's really as important. I think it's probably overtaken by the fact that your equity in the tournament is a lot greater than what it is at the beginning. A straight up simplified calcuation would say if I got this correctly, all stacks and skills equal, your tournament life is worth about twice as much now as when it started. (20k/$150= 133 people…I imagine it broke the guarantee and got closer to 200 people, which actually makes bounties even less valuable) if your stack is now worht $500, a bounty is only 10% of your stack. So yah, that would discourage wider wider opens and stuff, I think anyway. That doesn't mean it's not overtaken by something telling you to raise more often, it's just something that would be a theoretical push toward not opening as wide.

Okay actual math. When you open as a steal (and I assume you believe this to be so), you can measure the success of it with some math. Preflop there's gonna be 1050 in the pot and youre risking 1k. If the hand's ended here exactly, you'd need to be successful 48.8% of the time to break even. When you open, no matter the vpip there are a few hands that will play no matter what. If we say that no matter the position, 99+ AQ+ is continuing vs your open in some fashion. That's 4.9% of hands overall (accounting for the 9 you block), and with 5 people left to act, there's nearly a 25% chance someone has one of these hands. That's just an avoidable part and you can't really make assumptions that these hands will fold to flop or turn cbets based on various flops just because you feel like it. Basically I think that means that there's just a high chance that you have to see a flop when you open utg. If you were to do this with A5s, you decrease the chances of someone being involved in the hand by 20% because of your blocker. You go from 65 combos of hands that continue to 52 combos (remove half Ace combos and double 99 combos). That's 25% to 20%. That's not exactly insignificant. It's why I don't like opening incredibly wide here in the first place, because you can get away with it when you do it with blocker hands, or play postflop with hands that continue better (like JTs kinda stuff) If you open 89o here, you're opening like…I don't know 50% of hands here. If you opened all pairs, AT+, and KJ+, youre still only opening like 15% of hands, so it's really really easy to exploit you if you open this wide utg. In a high US buy-in 6 max tournament, clicking back poorly will occur, light 3betting will occur, like the player pool does that sort of without much of a plan in general, but you can't combat that by opening wide utg and then 4b or play postflop oop in a not small pot all the time.

On the flop, the pot is 8580, so youre getting 4.125:1 meaning you need to “win” 19.5% of the time. You know that once he check raises, you're unlikely to see the river for free. If you call, the pot's 10.6k and you'll have 18k behind. Even a small bet by villain makes it difficult to ever have fold equity, unless a small bet means really weak holdings, which I don't think he'll even have. like I don't think someone's c/r Axs and then leading small on the turn to maybe set their price so to speak. I think an Axs on missed turns is going to push their fold equity as umch as possible. I think it's weird to fold flop, but like…I don't know look at the math. You're not getting the river for free, you don't have fold equity unless villain shuts down, and you have only 6 clean outs and another 2 that may/may not also give villain a flush. I think the flop is shove or fold. His c/r makes the pot 10.6k (if you put your remaining 1600 in) and around 18k behind. He'll be getting 28k:18k , meaning he'll need to have 38% against your range. I'm not sure, but if he's thinking about your hands and doesn't necessarily realize you're shoving a lot of hands here (I mean you won't be), you look like JJ+ and while I don't think you'd play those hands that way, he could think that easily think that just by the fact that that's how the not as good guys would play it. I'm not entirely sure on how you appear to villain, so take this with a grain of salt.  I wouldn't want to do this with the nut flush draw, but doing it with a hand like this feels like a really good one of your range to do it with given that we got here. You get all flush draws except Ax to fold outright, all of which beat your 9 high. you get 88/99 7x stuff like T8/T9 KT JT to fold or face a really big decision. you block some of that folding range though with youre 89. It being a boutny may also cause you to get called in bigger pots more often because people overadjust for them ALL THE TIME. You have outs against anything that calls you, though much of the calling range here has redraw outs to you.

I've rambled a bunch here. Hope this adds to the discussion. I think a lot of this can be avoided simply by folding pre and having a constructed range that fits appropriately with gameflow in mind. if youre in tons of steals mode, then you want to do it with hands that play well when called or hands that block hands that continue postflop. this just comes down to being too loose. not that i think we need to assume villain's are going to have a hud, but anyone with a hud is going to see your stat and 3b you light and open up their value range a ton against you. 

just talked to him. he said he'd post when he got home from work tonight. so you might wanna take that down just so he gets to reveal?