This is a topic that Marios brought during the session we had. I love sizing preflop raises according to my position, so that it’s 5BB UTG, 3BB BTN and 4BB all positions in the middle (talking about 6Max).
When Marios noticed that, we had a discussion which basically ended up in argument whether it’s better to play a bigger or a smaller pot when out of position. The thing is that logically we want to wager the most of our money when we have the position on our opponent, and that’s the side Marios was defending. On the other hand, I’m advocating a different approach – assuming we enter the pot with the best preflop hand more often than not (which we are doing if we are to win), the less money we have left in our stack to play without position after the flop, the better.
Now, assume you have a marginally better preflop hand than your opponent, but he will have a positional advantage postflop. Would you rather put all your stack in right now, or see the flop for free in a 0BB pot and play for stacks post-flop out of position? I chose first. And of course we don’t have this extreme choice to make at the tables, but the closer we get to the first option, the better we stand.
The other thing is that I don’t want others to play against me when I’m out of position. Adding +1BB may make the opponent think twice about calling low pocket pair, or a suited one gapper, and that’s great, because I don’t want him to play these hands against me when he’s last to act.
On the contrary it’s true when I’m on the button. By making the raise 1BB smaller I can widen my range, because whenever I get called, we have huge stacks, compared to a smallish pot, left to play with me in position. I like it. I don’t even mind that my raise with AA is also just 3BB on the button, because I so much more often will be profitably playing marginal hands, that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. It compensates for that 1BB lost with your aces once every thousand hands, or so (AA exactly on the button is rare 
).
And if you don’t see how much difference that makes, here’s a short example:
Assume we’re on the button, everyone folds to us and the effective stacks are 100BB deep.
If we make it 4BB and get called by BB, it’s 8.5BB pot we play with 96BB stacks left behind. That’s ~11 pots in our stacks that we can play for.
If we make it 3BB and the same BB calls, we play for a 6.5BB pot with 97BB stacks, and that’s ~15 pots left to play with us in position. It’s way better to be able to wager 15 pots in position, than 11 pots, isn’t it?
The opposite is true when we’re UTG.
Hopefully I was able to explain my thoughts in some understandable manner, so that you can comment if I make any sense here or not
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In our session we talked about the 2 “schools”.
The “I want to charge more out of position” school and the “I want to play big pots in position”.
My thesis is that in micro levels it is better to raise the same amount on any position.
The reason is that you opponents usually don’t see what are you doing and they don’t think something like… “Oh. He added 1 more BB to his raise.. hm.. He did it because he always add 1BB oop.. “ but “wow!… This is 5BBs raise… Queens, Kings, Aces!”. And then you get the blinds with your monster because there was no action, because of the 1 more BB.
I also have to add something here. If you are really tight UTG (I saw your stats… you are!) then the most of the times you have hand, you don’t care to play out of position. So you want action. Don’t confuse your fishy friends with 1 “mathematic” Big Blind.
Note:
Don’t measure your stack with pots. In your example, 11 and 15 pots is the same amount or money. That means in both situations you risk the exact same money. (This is a very useful way to describe stacks and pots but not in this case.)
Again…
1 BB before the flop it is a serious decision and you are right overall.
You can have a much more bigger pot on the turn and river. Its your decision, if you want that or not. I just have to say…
Don’t tap the aquarium !!!