Think you are right about the skill level between the stakes getting closer. But there is still the human factor such as "scare of the moneynat higher stakes, gambling feelings etc" that will be a barrier for achieving a perfect equilibrium.

Also I can add that I've been playing multiple stakes ranging from NL100 to NL1000 for years. Player skills are merging towards an equilibrium somewhat but I've always felt that there isn't as big as a differnce between the stakes as some people seem to believe. Sure the best players at higher stakes are better than the best players at lower stakes but a lot of regs at lower stakes would do perfectly fine at higher stakes if they just had the roll and the mental aspect of not "feeling" that everyone is better than them and notplaying scared money. And as I said some of these issues will always be around in poker.

Even look at this forum there are micro stake players that are giving just as good answers about posted HH as mid stakes players. So the theoretical skill difference isn't as big as some seem to think, all in my oppinion of course. 

By "beaten" do you mean "solved?"

saying poker has been solved (i.e.  skill level more or less being equal across stakes) implies a black and white situation.

players (even those who are either serious hobbyists or pros) have differing levels of understanding of how to play the game..  nearly everyone has leaks or has had to deal with things like tilt that may affect quality of one's play.

are games post black friday as juicy as they were ten years ago?  of course not and that sucks to a certain extent, but i would think that the fact there are pros out there today post BF proves it is possible to still be profitable (whether poker is profitable enough is a different question)

" where the game at all stakes should be playing at the same skill level right? "

To this to be true it should mean that an NL5 player plays/learns/works as much as the Nl1000 player, but for 100-200x less profit. I dont think that will be the case. The more effort you put in the higher stakes you should be able to play for more profit.  Past times  when the game was new, with very few good player, lots of weak regs/fishes poker become attractive for ppl because the effort was small compared to the reward. Now it is more balanced and goes toward equilibrium, it is not that easy to make money, the system becomes more "just". I dont think that a new player will be willing to put in an infinite amount of effort/stress/study  just to beat NL100 for shitty money.. it is easier to work in a "mcdonalds".  So in conclusion i dont think that skill level will be close regardless of stakes.

Good point Buddho. I'd like to add though that what is in fact a lot of money or what one thinks is a nice effort contra reward is very individual. A person in say Kazachstan may think it's well worth the effort to put in a massive amount of time to master NL50 whereas a banker son in NY may not think it's worth the effort even if he was making 100 times more.

So I guess that might partly explain why a lot of the mid stakes have gotten dominated by eastern european players or old Soviet republics. 

Yeah, I remember Sbrugby stating that as well. The russians were generally weak players a few years ago. Now very much the opposite imo. Guess it took them a few years to study the game :)

Yeah, lots of eastern European locations used to be goldmines.

Now the new goldmines are places like Korea and China.

I think eventually the fish just all go broke and only players who are average or better remain after a time. The trick is following the new poker markets and demolishing the whales before others beat you to it.

the reason the games at lower stakes will always be better has less to do with how good the good players are, and more to do with how many/how bad the bad players are.  To be a mid-high stakes grinder you not only have to be rolled for the games, but you have to be good enough to win in tough games since often you'll have one semi-fish at most per table.  You also have to have the mental discipline to focus on decision making and not cash.  Some call it a degenerate-like disregard for money, but in reality it's just an ability to quiet emotion and focus on analysis and decision making regardless of stakes. 

Because of these ancillary factors (along with the natural weeding out of weaker players as well as the obvious incentive to improve) I believe that in most cases as stakes increase the average skill level of the regs also increases.