1. An accolade that never appeared...
I ended up shipping the $60 Stud8 Carbon/Aced OPS! If I have some time, I'll post some screenshots of the win.
It was a tough victory. The toughest player at my table (per Official Poker Rankings/OPR) got lots of chips towards the end. I was fortunate to pick up some big hands/scoops in HU play to seal it though!
2. The OPS reentry period lengths are still absurdly long. Registering with ~1 big bet (limit) or ~10 BBs in big bet games!
3. Min cashing and "getting a resume entry" seems rather easy in non-NLHE.
4. But, I somehow missed it in stud hi and razz. I was thinking about folding to money, but got rather big hand in stud and busted ~7 places from the money. Razz had no reentry for some reason...
5. I thought about late registering to the $109 PLO and trying to squeeze a min cash. (It was beat ~8 other players with identical starting stacks to hero). I actually had a really good shot. The $215 HORSE was a bit tougher though...
6. Fields seemed very soft in many spots.
Many of the mixed gamers stopped playing on Merge (PLO8/PLO, limit games, etc...).
7. I even ventured and played a couple NLHE MTTs on Sundays. Unfortunately, I bricked all of their "main events" except 1 ($11) after reentering 3+ times :(
8. There's still a big disconnect between quality of play and what I expect to see in WSOP.
Outside of $33+ NLHE MTTs, the field quality even in mid-stakes MTTs were pretty soft to their comparable cash game settings. This is likely a product of most players' impatience with Merge's horrible management.
Unfortunately, it didn't make me feel more comfortable about accurately assessing my skill level, especially in mixed games.
