thoughts on variance, buying in short, maximizing EV

[Smoove]

(this post was written before I played any hands with the new stacks)

I have mixed feelings about Party's move to 100 bb stacks. On the one hand: great! more postflop skills required and less playing like a robot preflop and on the flop. On the other hand: not so great. Given the same buy-in level, 10 PTBB/100 is looking....well...about half as good as it was before. (I doubt a good player will be able to beat these games for 20 PTBB/100 but I'd love for someone to prove me wrong).

Which brings me to my question. I've always been a bit conservative about moving up levels (waited until 30 buyins for NL100). Right now I have about 25 buy-ins for NL200....pre-100 bb stacks I was not planning to make this move until 30-35 buyins but now I'm pondering making it sooner with the thinking that the deeper stacks will allow me to make better postflop decisions, and thus decrease variance. Another thing to consider is the skill difference between levels (is the new NL200 about equal to the old NL100? is the new NL100 worse than the old NL100?)

Could an optimal strategy in this intermediate stage for me be buying in short (say...$120-$150 at a 200 table) ala Matt Flynn?