Quote Originally Posted by DaNutsInYoEye
3 people left. You're horribly short stacked in a big MTT after taking a horrible beat and have 13K in chips with blinds at 20K/40K. The other two people have the exact same stack size and one goes AI ahead of you and the second person calls. Barring an unlikely split pot, one of them will go bust on this hand. The action is on you and you fold AA. You make a big jump in pay simply by staying out of the way. You're going to be a favorite if you call, but your chances diminish when two other players are going to the river with their hands, and even if you had called and won you would still only have around 1BB and would very likely still place 2nd anyways.
Hmm, this makes me think. This seems to make sense to fold anything here, even if you did look down at AA. Nice point.

Quote Originally Posted by Greedo017
here's an example. SNG, 4 people left. You have 8000, two others have 4000, one other has 200. Blinds are 100/200. By knocking short stack out, you've successfully moved from 8000 to 8200... congrats. but, if you try to leave him in, you can continue to steal the blinds for potentially several more orbits, because the middle stacks won't want to get involved in anything until the tiny stack busts. so folding gets you more $$ and a better chance of winning than gaining just 200 more chips.
I didn't assume a shortstack was considered almost a "non-existent" stack. I can see what you mean by this, but based on this example he is going to lose this hand anyway, so why give his chips (and the sb/bb/antes) to somebody else? If you're on the button this hand and fold, he will certainly get called by both the sb and bb so he has 1/3 chance to win.