bebecoco is a fish not a reg.

I never played either, but what gives you so much trouble?I have played w/ Sa1251, he is a little unorthodox, but a solid player from my expeirience.

In my experience:

sheppit is a solid player at 15$

bighomeytim is a reg that plays a lot of game but is pretty much abc

donaldduck2 plays low volume but has insane stats and seems pretty solid

macbookpro is a guy that plays from a couple of days but has something like
13% roi over 400 games. i played once with him and he seems ok doesn't make mistakes

sofakingxxx played a couple of times if i remember right plays ok

If he is aggro 24/7 you should obv be able to take advantage of that. Playing air the same way as he plays the nuts doesn't matter too much. His frequenies matter, if he bluffs too much or if he is weighted too much towards value in certain situations.

I deposited some money into merge soft. just to see the players skills, i will start at $21 and the objective its rich $50 level in the final of the month. gl for me :D

For the guys that played/play Stars and FT...Are the games tougher on Merge or just as tough as they were on Stars/FT, assuming the same stakes are being played (ie 30s,50s)?I ask because I have a theory that a lot of winning players migrated to Merge post Black Friday, and since the action is a lot slowerI figure they moved down in stakes to compensate waiting time and a shallower player pool?Please and thank you

At the same time a lot of good players moved out of the country to play on Stars, others are grinding live too and some will never be willing to play for lower action at 1/3 their previous stakes (college, jobs, etc. are a better option to some).Also no fish relocate to other countries, but obviously a vast amount of online poker "fish" just flat out quit playing online after black friday.All in all I don't have a specific answer for you, I haven't played enough on Merge post black friday.

Thanks RyPac that seems reasonable enough, to say many other factors play a role and it may be hard to tell anyway. I was just curious in the event that there is another "poker boom" if Merge would be a good training ground or not. But as is I guess focusing on beating the games on Merge regardless of any other factors, should be a priority. This site has been extremely helpfull by the way.

Merge should be a good playing ground as far as player skill goes. Poker regulation with some big states like California and New York on board should produce even softer games than on Merge currently I would imagine, but I guess nobody really knows, it's just an educated guess (television ads, cheaper processing, more effective marketing should = softer games, but I guess rake is really the major variable that could negatively impact profit the most).When it comes to any US facing site, security, legality, safety of funds, all that sort of stuff is a part of the equation, depending on who you are, where you live and what your skill level/goals are.