Quote:
Originally Posted by namisgr11
Apologies if it seemed I ignored it, rather than simply shortened it for simplicity sake.
I stand by the opinion that while it may have a negative side on those very rare instances "when you have less than one blind, you are much less interested in the quality of your own hand than you are in the overlay you are getting from everyone who folds preflop", the positive benefit from not having your short stack bleed away when playing in any other position than the big blind is a far more common occurrence and overrides it.
I'm not just talking about situations where the extreme short stack is in the BB (though this situation is obviously also disadvantageous to the shortstack with BB ante). I think BB ante is bad for any extreme short stack, i.e. where you only have an ante or less.
For example, contrast two situations where you are in the field (not a blind) with 100 chips:
1.) 400/800 with an 800 BB ante
2.) 400/800 blinds with a 100 ante from each player at an 8-handed table
In the first situation (BB ante), the first time you go all-in, if you win, you will only win 100 out of the ante, ending up with 200 chips. If you go all-in a second time, you will end up with
400 chips if you win.
In the second situation (regular ante), you will be forced all-in the first hand, but if you win, you will win the ante from every player, ending with 800 chips. Suppose you go all-in a second time (with 700 chips after a 100 ante), someone else in the field raises, everyone else folds, and you beat that player. You will now have
3300 chips (your 700+BB's 700+SB's 400+raiser's 700+800 antes).
Under BB ante, if you win 2 all-ins, you still only have half an ante left. With normal ante, you have more than 8x this, and a playable 4BB stack. It is true that with BB ante, you might be able to wait a few hands to get your chips in. But I'd much rather have the potential to 8x my stack with a random hand than double my stack with a good hand.
