[LearnedfromTV]

Good post Ninja.

This isn't to say that a "reverse Gigabet Dilemma" situation never exists, but:

a) If you are close to the end of the tournament, there is a natural tendency for a borderline cEV call to have greater $EV than cEV for a big stack, because of the value of eliminating a player. I think this usually outweighs the decreasing marginal value of excess chips and the splashing around value of using big stack chips to accumulate without showdown; in fact, one could argue that the best possible use of excess chips is to take 50/50 shots at eliminating short stacks (since the wins have a built-in $EV bonus that any negative impact of taking the 50/50 has to overcome. Say you have 50K with 9 players left. Even if the difference between 60K/9 players and 50K/9 players is less than the difference between 40K/9 players and 50K/9 players, the difference between 50K/9 and 60K/8 is probably greater.

b) If you are earlier in a tournament, your "big stack" likely isn't big enough (i.e if you don't accumulate chips you won't be a big stack for long).