[Knockwurst]

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OK. I am now ready to hear explanations on your answers. And a guess as to why I see an analogy with the Snyder head up situation. And a theory about what is going on in the heads of the people who are screwing this up. It seems like there is a specific fallacy operating and it should have a name. And forgiveness for lying when I said I have to think about this.

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It seems that your initial question relates to Snyder's contention that a player with a 90-10 chip advantage has a much greater than 90% chance of winning the freeze out. I assume Snyder is basing his contention either on his theory that more chips have a higher utility value based on the fact that a player has more weapons/moves at his disposal or the corollary that a person with a significant chip disadvantage only has one move -- the all in. And as the blinds represent a greater percentage of the smaller stack, he is forced to go all in with worse and worse hands.

However, the fallacy is as follows: the fact that the short stack is forced to play looser and go all in with a progressively worse range of hands is not a function of the chip disparity between it and the big stack, but a function of the small stack's relationship to the blinds. Provided that the blinds are small enough in relation to the stacks, the small stack can play just as optimally as the big stack.

You use the example of a contest where two players who presumably play optimally are faced with a situation where one needs only one win in five to win the contest. This does away with the blinds, which were a factor in the Phillips-Tomko scenario. Where the blinds are not a concern, the player who needs one win should still play the same optimal game, no looser or tighter than before.

One question I have though, provided that blinds are not an issue, should the small stack (or the person who is behind in your scenario) avoid coin flip situations since he should avoid a small advantage (ie. 52%-48%)and wait to get the money in when he has much the better of it. If so, would the short stack discarding AKs preflop, for example, after facing a push when he knows the other player's range is 22+, AJo+, AJs+ where the short stack is a 52-47 favorite adversely affect his optimal play?