[Foucault]

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The fundamental idea, never articulated as clearly as it could be, seems to be that in tournament Fixed Limit Hold 'Em, you need to be able to do a lot with a little. As he puts it, "The beauty of my strategy is that you don't need a big stack to execute it. If you have enough chips to comfortably bet through the hand, that is enough for it to work." The cut-off, in other words, is four big bets, equivalent to a pre-flop raise, a flop raise, a turn bet, and a river bet.

This makes a lot of sense, since below this critical stack size, you will not have all of your tools at your disposal and probably will not be able to generate the fold equity you need to stay alive.

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Actually that doesn't make sense to me. At that point (once you are down to 4 BB and raise), you are essentially at a commitment point for the tournament on the flop (some would say even preflop). The point of this is that 4 BB is not a comfortable or workable stack size, because all bets (at the very least turn and river bets) hold very little credibility. You are desparate and for all practical purposes all-in regardless of the strength of your hand.

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Good point. The same four bets probably will have somewhat less fold equity when they are your last four than when you have a larger stack. Importantly, though, the cost to see a showdown would be the same for an opponent. I do still think that your pre-flop or flop raise would drastically lose effectiveness when you had <4BB in your stack, since at that point not only are you on a 'desperation range' but your opponent knows it won't cost him as much to show his hand down.