I won't say i'm the world's best player, but I started with 50 and worked it up to about 18,000 over 7 months and I'm still improving.

The point I'm trying to make is that I could not beat the pacific fishfest when I played there. I played 0.25/0.50 and 0.50/1.00 at that time, fixed limit. It was the only site where I actually lost all of my bonus money. Recently I took a little time off to clear a paradise poker bonus that was sittng there for a while, and did it via $0.5/1.00 limit (don't ask why i regressed back to that game) and I just couldn't beat it. 7 players see flops when u raise, just keep calling and calling and giving each other odds: lost $50 over 900 hands or so... so about -5.5/100, admittedly over a small sample size. It WAS demoralizing.

I'm not saying that the fishfests are unbeatable 'cos they certainly are. But they require a different playing style and a different way to make money than more "normal" tables (say prima). With a proviso that u have a sufficient bankroll, it can be a healthy thing to move up. That said, if you can't beat 1/2, moving up is just gonna get u killed faster. What's more, what u learn from beating the ultra fishy tables will not necessarily make u a winner on the standardly fishy tables.

IF you have the means to deposit, then do so and see how you go at a higher limit, so long as you're constantly reading and learning and analyzing your play and you're not playing with scared money. If you can't deposit, then i guess u just have to build ur roll. Casino whore, freerolls, or be infuriated

It is also true that if you don't care about $2, you will not play good poker. I mean, put me on even a $10 table and unless i'm doing it for a reason, I'd play at 50% my potential if i was lucky. Of course, if you don't have the capacity to get a $150 roll then $2 should mean something to you. Don't play at stakes that you just don't care about (the counter argument is that it's not the $2 you should care about, but developing the discipline, and making sure u actually ARE a winning player, and the satisfaction of winning at any stakes means you should have sufficient motivation should you start low)