[cognito20]

About 2 months ago, I made an initial deposit of $50 at Poker Stars and have run it up to about $250 since then, basically just by not doing much fancy and sticking to solid hand values. I was up as far as $400, but then took a pretty big hit playing 0.50/1 PS limit. I was down 58 BB in 8 sessions despite a VPIP of 17.36, preflop raise of 8.13 and postflop aggression factor of 2.91, although with the tiny sample size of 2459 hands I'm waiting for someone to reassure me that I was just running exceptionally bad. :P lol What with that and cashing out some money to purchase Poker Tracker after the 1000 hand trial period, and paying off my brother with online bankroll money after losing a couple heads-up live mixed game tournaments to him, I decided to drop back down to 0.25/0.50 for a bit to retool.

I am considering making a $300 deposit to Party Poker, a site on which I have never played, and delving into their 0.50/1 ring games there, because of the going rumor that it's a veritable aquarium at those levels. Basically, I'd like to hear what you think about the quality of the games at Party as opposed to PS. Are the games at PokerStars really that much tougher than at Party in your opinion and experience? And are the .50/1 games at PS supposed to be that darn good, at least considering the monetary level?