So, after playing in the WPBT the other night, I had the $10 bonus they gave me for first deposit on my account at Titan Poker. I thought what the hell, I might as well see what I can do with the free money. I read their rules for matching the deposit, and you need to play at least 1000 hands of .25/50 to get $10 matched. This is obviously a lot higher limits than I'd been playing at Party so far (.01/.02), but the perfect time, learning with their money! Long story short, I turned the $10 into $67 in an hour. 114 BB/hr, hmm. There were some huge fish there! I'm finally starting to believe what everybody has been telling me. One guy called my TPTK all the way to the river where I went all in - with TP, 9kicker. Unbelievable. I made over $20 on that hand alone. I didn't get all crazy, just played the nuts when I had 'em, and semi-bluffed a few draws. I had fold equity because I was folding everything but group 1 and 2 hands. It was trippy fun. Didn't want to leave the table, because the chaser bought back in for $50, but I had to get to bed.
I certainly never expected my BB/hr rate to go UP when I moved up in $ - I was averaging 30 BB/hr on .01/.02 tables. Small sample - 5 hours total (4 on .01/.02, 1 on .25/.50), would somebody care to comment on whether this is just "beginners' luck", or what?

I had sent the above post essentially verbatim to Chris Halverson, PPP. Following is his reply:

"Glad your play went well, but basically, your sample size is MUCH too small. You need on the order of 50,000 hands at a given level to determine anything with any sort of statistical relevance. That's the thing that new players have trouble coming to grips with: The long run is a really long time. Not saying you are, but in general, people get a run of a few days and think they are gods at that level when in reality it's nothing. Your BB/hr will go down. That's really all there is to it :) Now, it can still be highish at the microlevels, but as you move up it will start to approach 1-2BB/hr, maybe (MAYBE!) 3.
There are, however, _terrible_ people everywhere. If you can stay at a table with somebody bad, then you can potentially make a ton. Just keep in mind that the next session you may only catch 2nd best hands all night.
That's poker :-)" (Thanks Chris!)

That's in keeping with what I expected. I had read about the 2-3 BB/hr rate being about the best that could possibly be expected, so I was shocked to the point of disbelief by the win rate I was enjoying in these early hours. I KNOW I'm not very good yet, I've got holes that I haven't fixed yet, plus lots that I'm sure I don't have the experience/knowledge to see yet. In other words, I haven't even corrected the problems I know I know about! I'm sure the axe of variance will fall, and that right quickly. In the meantime, I'll keep grinding out the hands working toward the bonus on Titan - and I really should see what I need to do on Party too, come to think of it.