I've been playing online poker more than a year. I've played the same $100 buy-in for at least the last six months, currently have around $400 after cashing out a little profit (just to prove I could).

I spend most of my time playing $5 SNG NL of any size. I've also had rather stunning success in HORSE tourney's on FTP, but this is a bit of an enigma and I'm not really interested in any of those limit games on their own.

Here's a problem pattern:

I get a up a little bit, go down a bit, and get tired of the slow grind at the $5 SNG and start playing way outside my BR. I may win for awhile, then I lose. I made $300 in the last 4 days playing $100NL short-handed for example. Haven't started losing yet. I discovered late at night there are drunk people who will give you their entire stack, its fun.

I do think I play a little better at this level because the money means a little bit, but I'm not scared. At low stakes where the money means absolutely nothing I often find it hard to take someone seriously when they are sticking it to me for value. Also at $100 NL there are some more thinking people and I think this opens up the game a bit and makes it more interesting and more of a learning experience.

So now I'm thinking about doing something really stupid, like staking myself to play at this level on a regular basis. The money is not a problem, if I staked myself $2000 and lost it I wouldn't miss any payments or even any vacations, although I might lose my mind.

A couple problems with this obviously: I don't have the hand history to show I can play $100 NL. I don't know that I won't get just as bored at this grind and want to move up again before I'm ready. I really don't want to become that guy who is always playing a couple levels outside of his reach and is bleeding money - if I let a pattern like this escalate I could easily begin losing money that really hurts me (there must be lots of people doing so, or no one could make money at bigger stakes).

I do not want to multi-table. I want to get really good at poker and I think the cheap SNG are not helping me, and multi-tabling 25NL would not help me much either. So any ideas how to make 25NL "interesting" enough? Should I just try to earn my $2000 stake grinding it out at 25NL (duh, yes). How do I determine the right "level" to get started at?