The novice has a three to one stack advantage over the world class player. To make it simple, let's call it twelve chips to four. The novice knows enough to try to go "all in" if possible. So his advantage consists of the fact that if he goes all in with four chips versus four, he can break the world class player in one hand. And if he loses, he will go all in as soon as possible with eight chips against eight. That is, the world class player needs two "all ins" to win, the novice one. Assuming that the chances of winning are random, 50-50, this means that the novice's chances of winning could be as high as 75%.
Suppose the novice is the small blind for the first game, having put down one chip, the world class player two. The novice can then produce the above result by raising to four. Of course, it s/he loses, the world class player has the advantage for the second round. But if the novice is 50-50 for the first round, then any equity in the second round would make him or her an overall favorite.
Of course, a large part of the problem is the size of the blinds relative to the stacks. If the novice had 1200 chips versus 400 chips for the world class player, and the blinds were still one and two, the novice would not have so much of an advantage, and might be at a disadvantage.
Is there any theory regarding how large stack sizes need to be relative to the blinds before the value of differences in stack sizes is "small" relative to differences in skill?