While railing Stars high stakes games, I've seen some elite HS players buying in for 40BB. Can somebody explain why they would do this? At this table, OtB was buying in for 40 BB, which I don't understand because presumably he's giving up some EV since he's an elite player that will have more of an edge deep-stacked.

I remember in a podcast Ben86 said players do this in PLO because you can get all-in 3 ways as a shortstack with your equity protected and have the other players make each other fold. However, 3-way all ins are way less common in NLHE and I'm sure the EV sacrifice from playing short isn't worth the very rare EV gain of being all-in multiways.