[rafiki]

I didn't read all the posts, but I'll add my perspective, hopefully there's not too much overlap.

I play poker casually. I have a day job, so if I get 10-14 hours of poker in a week right now, that's a lot. As such my online roll really isn't big enough for multitabling 15/30 for example. Because of that, when I'd go play casinos with my cash roll, I'd play 3/6 and 5/10. One day my friend told me to sit in the 8/16 the wynn had. I couldn't get over how bad the play was, and with a few grand on me, I could suffer the variance that a couple of days in that game would offer. We went to the bellagio on the next visit. I had...about 3000$. I sat at the 15/30 for the first time, and I felt terrible. I ran ridiculously cold, and without even getting a hand worth raising, I was down a few hundred. I went back down to play some 2/5 NL with my tail between my legs. Stacked 2 guys there, and decided to go back to 15/30. And that's when everything changed. I ran *decent*. Not well by any means. But value bet my hands, and ran well enough to win during that session. After 1 more session at that, I felt like I was always one of the 2 best players at the table. Even when I'd start a session down 800$, if I played long enough I'd always come out on top. Sometimes even, but almost always on top. I found the field to be weaker then the 2/4 game online. Ever since, I've only found a handful of 15/30 and 30/60 games where I felt I had to get up and leave. Usually because the table beside ours had huge fish, and a quick table switch meant way more profit. I think the biggest hurdle for me was paying so much in the blinds. When I got over that aspect, I could play optimally again. I quickly learned to avoid conflicts with players that were a lot better then me. And learned to try and get as much out of the worst tables at the table. Something that's not always as obvious with 6-8 tables open online.