STT hypothetical bubble question

[palman]

Blinds 100/200 on the bubble, you are shortest stack with 1400 in the big blind, with direct position on the second shortest stack with 1800. Turbo, and both other opponnents are tied with 5k+ chips. Assume all players are regulars, meaning the 2nd shortest stack will be able to shove on you much more often than you can shove on him.

Also lets assume the button or the big stacks won't be raising to steal your blind every time because they are tied and the blinds are so low, so the SB will have a few shots to shove you. He's a good player and will be shoving a large range.

Its folded to the SB who is the 2nd shortest and he shoves. If my opponnent flipped his cards over and I knew it was a race I'd call in a heartbeat because I'm in the worst seat for stealing. Is this standard?

I'm also willing to call if I knew I was a slight dog? does anyone else agree with this? How much of a dog would you be willing to call as? I'm thinking I'd gladly take a 40/60. Is this a huge leak? Do you fold and just pray for cards? Thoughts?

[TruFloridaGator]

1)If you knew it was a race, yes you should call. It's generally very +EV or barely -EV vs all flip possibilities. So if you factor in the tough stealing situation, you should call.

2)Taking a 40/60 is a huge leak, you will still get some +EV shoves, so it would be very bad to take a largely -EV play. Taking a 40/60 is much worse than taking a flip, even though you are only losing the hand 10% more often.

[IFoldPktOnes]

Short answer:
~48% minimum, positional disadvantage not a big factor in this case.

Crazy Theoretical Ranting:
Just because you are at a positional disadvantage doesn't mean you should take marginal -EV (by ICM). What determines the extent of -EV it is correct to take is how effective your action is at reducing your positional disadvantage. A 0 EV action reduces your positional disadvantage by increasing the variance of your expected stack size in such a way that leads to a more favorable situations in terms of stack sizes. The favorable situation in this case would be having the t1800 stack covered, hence reducing your positional disadvantage vs that opponent.

If you call SBs all in and double up you cripple his stack to t400 and the next hand you will still be at significant positional disadvantage (think about why). IMO the reduction of positional disadvantage isn't very significant in this case.

Also, in general it would be better to take marginal pushes than marginal calls to reduce positional disadvantage. This is because calling outcomes (eg. 50%-win/50%-lose) lead to more symmetric variance about your expected stack size, compared to the outcomes when you push (eg. 70%-steal/20%-lose/10%-win) which leads to asymmetrically favorable variance about your expected stack size.