Games have gotten much harder relatively speaking. Gone are the dream days of Party Pokers fish fest where if you were good, winning 4BB/100 was common place. Since last Oct. there has been a notable shift (coinciding with the anti-online leislation).
For Americans table selection is key,as our online choices became muc more limited. Even the best (so I hear) are only 2BB/100.
Again, as play has gotten harded, better players are playing lower limits. At $20 sitngo you will notice an increase in the level of play. This also applies to cash games, where as before 3-6 nl was a joke, it now plays like 10-20 did a year ago. 1-2 is like 3-6. At $.25-$.50 I guess is still very fishy.
Thats the bad news. The good news is that live play is still incredibly juicy! The basic belief (which I agree with) is that if youre a winning $10 sitngo online, then you probably will do very well at $100-$150 live. If you are beating $.25-$.50 NL online that equates to a $2-4 NL winner live!
Embrace the bad beats. Idiots getting lucky occasionally are the only reason they stay around for you to take their money later. If there were no bad beats, online poker would be dry as a desert.