Looking at Mesas

Last night I was pondering how I managed to go from a nanonoko style graph up until 2009 to a sudden, Saskatchewan style watch your dog run away for 3 days flat plateau breakeven graph in 2010.

Specifically speaking, what the hell happened in early 2nd quarter 2010? And it's not just me. Those that were crushing are still crushing, but a ton of the mediocre / above average regs like me somehow ended up with these weird mesa graphs and we've subsequently seen a lot of people that played small stakes consistently for years having to move down.

And, like the mesa over there --> it wasn't a gradual flattening out of winrates either. It was a sharp, sudden change, and most of us have never recovered.

The obvious event to point to was the advent of the 20-50 games on Stars which happened around that time. But that doesn't explain why most seem to still have not recovered now that 20-50 is gone.

I'm at a loss as to why this is:

• With the dissolution of 20-50, you'd expect winrates to start to resemble 1st quarter 2010 even if they were somewhat lower due to tougher games. The end of the plateau.
• Are cap games still having that large of an effect on the player pool?
• Black Friday hasn't really affected winrates at all afaik.
• It can't be that the money's drying up because that doesn't explain the sudden leveling off and the continued breakevenness. Plus the player pool has been fairly constant.
• Concepts have trickled down and it's ridiculous that 25NL is now running at 15%+ table 3bet vs PFR, but again, that should show gradual progression.
• There's so many graphs out there like mine and the time frame comparison is just eerie.

So what exactly happened between A (pre 2010) and B (post 2nd quarter 2010)? I would love to hear some theories. Note: In before someone blames it on sucking at poker, I acknowledge that fact. But there has to be some sort of catalyst for the sudden change between March-May in most of these graphs.