[Lloyd]

I think he could have top pair, two pair, pair and a draw, etc. Something like AJ-A2 (with decreased chances the lower you go), KQ-KJ, maybe JJ. At best you're 56/44 making this very slightly EV.

I understand what the Anthology says about not passing up small edges early, and I agree with it 100%. The question is whether or not you have an edge that would even be classified as "small" (versus negligible) and should you call just for the sake of variance.

Having a background in securities portfolio management I always knew that you should be seeking to maximize return while minimizing variance. Variance was bad. I think there are times in poker when variance is fine but they have to do more with meta-game issues which usually aren't present in the first few rounds of a tournament.

So I don't think a call is absolutely horrible or anything. I think it's a marginal situation and if you feel like you need to take risk (without the compensatory reward) to go deep in the tournament then by all means this is a great spot. After all if you lose you're stack is still relatively healthy.