What is a level?

I'm posting this answer to a boots comment as a post, because it's sprawled a bit.

boots asked whether I do have a level, and wtf is a level anyway?

It means that there is a level of buyin at which I have an edge over the opposition.

boots, generally, you could consider yourself on a scale of pokering. Let's say I am a 45 out of 100 (this is not a realistic score, just an illustration). I might play several 10s, a few 50s, whatever, but if the average is 35, I am a favourite to win money. Not guaranteed, but I have an edge. Betting with an edge is what gambling is all about. (It doesn't matter that there are individual players better than me. What matters is my edge over the pool of players as a whole.)

However, if most players in the games I play are 50s, so that the average is, say, 50, I am over my head. I am betting with the worst of it. I may win (and I've seen players who are hopelessly outclassed but still win) but I can basically expect to lose.

The thing is, I want to know whether when I back myself with 16 dollars in a 16 turbo I am making a good bet or a bad one. The dissonance for me has come from this:

a/ before playing 16s, I felt I would be making a good bet. I had good reason to think that: I beat the 5ers, 6.50s and 10s decently; I feel comfortable discussing hands at this level on 2p2; I review others' 16s and feel I have a good handle on the play
b/ I lost heavily.

I ran badly, true. I can think of several spots where I got my money in good but was just outlucked. That's going to happen, and of course there will be days where it happens continuously. Yesterday, for instance, I was on the bubble with about 4100/15000 chips. I got it all in with shorty with AK. He had A4 and flopped a 4. Then I called a push with another AK. I'm reasonably confident it was a good call because even though I was covered by the pusher, I felt he had a fairly wide range and I was quite short, but it's conceivable that ICM would indicate a fold. Anyway, he turned over A9s and rivered a 9. So here I dominated others twice in only a few hands, got my money in good, and still ended up losing dollars. But that's poker. The problem is that losing a few buyins at the 16s has left me unsure whether I ran badly enough to account for it, played badly or went on tilt and let bad luck influence my play. I've gone over some of the games in Wiz, and it's not indicating bad pushes or calls, but I lost several games postflop.

So I don't know. My belief is that my level is the 16s, or quite possibly the 27s. I think my play is sound, on the whole. My knowledge of ICM is a bit sketchy, but on the not aggressive enough side, which shaves a few points from your ROI but doesn't necessarily make you a terrible player. There are just so many guys who clearly have no idea of pot odds, tournament equity or basic strategy. I played a 20 on PokerRoom the other night and I couldn't discern any difference in ability on the whole between the players there and in a 5er. I also once observed a 100 on PR and you know, the players there were mostly shit. You can't tell much from one game, because you might just have stumbled on a particularly fishy tourney, but at least I know that bad players do exist at that level. (The thing is, boots, that if my level is 45, I might find 30s in the 100-dollar level, but there will be enough 55-60s and better that the average will leave me with no edge.)

Anyway, I'm very busy this month, so I don't have time to devote to thinking about poker too much. So it was no problem to drop back to playing 5s and 10s, where I'm certain I do have an edge, and not worry too much about it. I can try the 16s again in the new year, once I've been able to do some more work on ICM and have a think about whether my basic strategy was at fault. Maybe I need to be a bit more nitty postflop. That would be the thing I need to look at, I think. I can post hands to 2p2 and get some help from better players. It might be that I played the hands okay, but simply ran badly enough to make it feel like I was going wrong. Or it might be that I made poor choices and can fix it. I'm not despondent about it (although I was when it happened). I am still on the way up.