BCD, I agree with everything you say. The grooves help to lock you hand onto the grip. BUT they also work AGAINST you in certain situations because they lock your hand into ONE grip style, regular or hammer grip, tip away from your hand and edge down and inverted or ice pic grip with the blade coming from the bottom of your hand and edge away from you. In a strict survival situation, I personally wouldn't want my ONLY tool to work against me. Again, just my observations.

I say IF you like the grooves, get them. After all it is YOUR knife, not someone else's.