Freeroll tournament final table, 9 handed. blinds 300/600.


Stacks after blinds:
SB (Hero): 3390
BB: 250

SB is dealt 32o. Folds to SB. What to do here?

I don't think calling makes sense since BB is commited.

I have no reads on BB, so it should be reasonable to assume BB will never fold to a shove here. If i shove i'd be risking 550 to gain 1700 so if this was a cash game i'd need 550/1700≈32.3% equity to shove. 32o has aproximately 32.3% equity against a random hands, therefore a shove is approximately 0 EV. So if this was a cash game i'd need to calculate the equity to higher precision to know whether fold is better than shoving. But this is a tournament. Does the fact that this is a tournament make shoving better or worse (or does it depend on payment structure?)?

There's ICM for this kind of things.
I guess that the chance of a player out makes you want to shove atc.

Call, if only because you badly need chips

Since it's roughly 0 EV, i'd think ICM says shove is bad, since chips risked are worth more than chips won. Am i correct?

your calculations are correct, shoving is pretty much exactly cev0. And yes, as you mentioned, ICM dictates that it is a fold. I'm not an expert on ICM, but I think that if the 2 of you were 2 shortest stacks at the table it might be different, as you would benefit greatly from getting the payjump (correct me if I'm wrong please)

I have a problem with the numbers. If villain’s stack is 250, hero’s risk is 250 with a shove. I’m not sure what the 550 value refers to in the OP.

For a 250 shove, chip EV is positive if total pot after all bets is 1700 (required equity is 250/1700 = 15%), which calls for a shove. Whether that same decision should be made considering ICM would depend on stack and prize distributions. For a sample I tried where hero has a middle stack, it’s pretty close, shove vs fold.

550 because he first needs 300 to match the BB

Of course