Secrets of the Amateurs

Funnily enough a similar situation to the one I talk about below comes up in Harrington On Hold-Em 2. Problem 10-13 if anyone has it to hand.

Online tournament. Blinds 3K/6K, antes 300, 9 handed so 11,700 in the pot. It's folded to you with 4 players behind you. Stacks :

You 80K
Cut-off 44K
Button 148K
SB 14K (after posting)
BB 1500 (after posting)

You find A4. What do you do, what do you do ?

Dan makes it 12K, although he does say "A very conservative player might elect to fold here, and that's not a bad play".

Without doing an exhaustive analysis, if this play works and everyone folds except of course the BB, then we have put in 7500 and the total pot is now 20500. If A4 is 60% against a random hand the EV when no one calls is about 5K. We're putting in 12 to win 5, there's the SB to worry about, and if we get any action from cut-off or button I'm either going to pass to a reraise or be in a horrible situation if they call. In the problem, hero is reraised by the cut-off and Dan recommends a pass at this point.

It's not a clear cut fold pre-flop but it's a bit thin for my liking. Plus you're going to show A4 and that's not going to help your stealing image.