[BigZag]

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Most players will know that you betting half your stack is a commitment. Not many players bet 3.5BB and then fold leaving themselves with 3.5BB. Since players know this, they realize that you are not folding any flop.

So why would they call? Pot odds. You have 7.1K in chips and the pot is 400/800+800=2000. Say you bet 3K. For the BB, there is now 5000 in the pot and he needs to put in 2200 to call giving him 2.3:1 odds to call.

Now the pot is 7200 and you have 4100 left. For him to call a flop all-in (which you or any other normal player will be doing automatically), he will have 11.3:4.1 odds or 2.8:1 odds. He can assess the flop and either call with these great odds or fold if he feels he doesn't have the almost 25% equity he needs to make his call correct.

Basically, you are giving the BB an opportunity to make a correct call to your pf raise and either a correct fold or call to your inevitable flop all-in.

I can't do the math but I think you'll find if you took all the ranges of BB's hands and went through the scenarios, you would see that simply shoving pf would make more in the long run.

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This argument is pretty convincing. In fact I'm now fully convinced my shove was correct. Thanks to everybody who posted.