Well put. It just seems to me that with the 2 sites I have experience with so far (I'll give up on pokerstarts eventually too) they seem to clue into when you have a nice ROI. Then the variance is one way and one way only. Variance would also mean that you might win 20 95%ers in a row. When you consistently can't win them over a prolonged period of time... well then there is no variance and you have to question what is going on.

I think the sites still let good players have a positive return. And bad players will never have a positive return. But they try to level the playing field to not discourage the donks and lose A LOT of business.

That's my impression after a few years of grinding out some money at this painful game.