Sorry I meant the big stack. Still don"t get it, but it must be me You"re saying that even if we knew we were ahead of the big stack pre flop, we are better off passing as he might get lucky and hit? On that basis would we ever play a hand?
Nah, definitely not!
What I"m saying is that if we know the big stack is going to call with a lot of hands, we don"t win enough to justify the risk in ICM as chipEV does not equal $EV - the risk of losing all our chips and being eliminated from the tournament is more than what we get when he folds and we win the blinds.
If we know he folds a lot of hands but when he does call, we are dominated, we get him to fold enough times to make this a +EV play despite the fact that we invariably lose when he does call. Hence the silly thing of we want him to be a nit -
our main target here is not to double up, it is to take the dead money with as little risk as possible.
(Don"t get me wrong, if I can see he has KT and he is going to call then I shove all day long!!)