One more thought that I think could be worthwhile is to summarize my observations when leaving a level. If nothing else, it'll be a nice reference for me if I get knocked back down. Granted, the play can change dramatically from site to site from day to day, but there is probably some common ground as well. Even though raked poker is worse than a zero sum game, at PokerStars $2NL $0.01/$0.02, I strongly believe just about anyone who is reasonably competent can beat this game. And, I was surprised by how much "real poker" I was able to play. Although there are definitely some maniacs out there, it's NOT total chaos with people who have no regard for penny blinds pushing all-in. More often than not, I was able to do all the standard plays you'd expect to make like raising or limping pre-flop, seeing flops, and even making successful bluffs.

For starters, there seems to be a LOT of "robot" poker. Mostly short-stacked one table players or full stack multi-table players camping for premium hands and looking to double up. These players are very profitable to play against because they only have one small-set of hands they play and one gear to play them from. You can just smell that they don't want to make decisions after the flop, so the passive ones will just call and fold or maybe just call everything and the aggressive ones will raise big preflop and push hard on the flop. They are usually easy to steal money from and when they put up a lot of resistance, it's easy to get away from hands. Quite simply, they're not really playing poker and anyone who plays predictably should be easy to exploit.

The majority of players seem tight/passive/passive (rocks) or tight/passive/aggressive. These players can be tough to get action from, but easier to pick-up lots of small pots and blinds. Fortunately there are enough loose/passive/passive (fish), calling stations, or weak loose/aggressive/aggressive players to help build big pots to make more money from. The most obvious bad plays made at this level seem to be overvaluing hands. Many players just have a tough time letting go of top pair and even more who will lose the farm with two pair even if the paired board only needs one card to make a flush or a straight.

On the other side of the coin, there are also plenty of competent players usually playing tight/aggressive/aggressive or slightly loose/aggressive/aggressive - not everyone was easy to extract money from and several seemed very calculating and solid.

For only 11k hands, I don't know if my 24BB/100 or 12ptBB/100 is a really good statistic, par for the course, or something that can or can't be maintained over the long haul. It's always possible I was running really well or picking up nice table draws and the like. Or maybe I underachieved and even better numbers are possible, but at any rate, it definitely seems beatable and it was a fun way to get back in the game.

It'll be interesting to see how much the dynamics change @ $5NL. I guess the one element above all I'd like to see @ every level is enough fish to make the game profitable. It's much easier to outplay one fish than it is to constantly try to eek out money from or save money against seven sharks.