i wish i wasn't like 13 years old during the golden age of poker, if i was even 16-17 in 2004 i'm sure i could have made a lot of money. by the sounds of it i'm sure i'd make quite a lot more playing my pre-2+2 game in 2004, than i do in the current environment even with my much better understanding of the game.

i remember watching my friend play TWO tables of .50/1 limit at Party...

I was like....WHOAAA DUDE!!! no way!!!!

Withdrawing my money from party and party giving me 30 in my account run it up to 500 rinse and repeat

Watching a MTT that had HUNDREDS of players in it!

entirely possible at low limits at tribeca for a while.

wilco- probably played you in that 3K added value to winner rebuy at times (somewhat recognize the name) . never did win it

memories of tribeca are fond.

-first and foremost the legendary crashes followed by the basic "we'll throw freerolls for everyone so stop bugging us about reimbursing you" policy.

-the nights where the player number could still dip into double digits

-they had these $2 mtt giveaways and dime giveaway stts people could start at.

-they had a morning UK/overnight US trivia contest/games "breakfast show". I got much needed cash early in a bankroll build from both the trivia and the random lotto win and I have many gold chips now on a cake skin still from those old rewards.

-near the end (thinking late fall before they closed to all US in Feb) gpp added elimination blackjack stt/mtts (many guaranteed), had overlay always, and ran a series of tournaments with solid prize pools - maybe called it a grand prix? can't quite recall now, that I ran very well in with massive overlay.

-they'd also run tons of holiday/seasonal specific promos- quizzes in the lobby and big freerolls etc, and on tables- bounty tournaments where they'd pick people from the lobby to be the bounties, etc.


now I'm gonna go cry.

My problem was that I had a day job (and still do). But I always tried to figure out how to play more hours because I just knew that it was going to go away some day.

Of course, online poker is still around but it's just not the same...

[hunting around for a time machine]

I want to know how many people who started playing poker after Party pulled out of the US think that theyd be rich if they played back in the good ole days. Number seems high.

I miss LHE SNGs and of course, the Party steps system

Oh, and making money

- Empire Poker (and other skins) offering secret rakeback deals, letting guys get under-the-table RB at Party

- The night Party blew up the skins (disconnected them from the network suddenly, leaving all the RB players separated from the juicy Party player base)

- Pokershare (when on the TWAIN (or was it TAIN?) network) hosting daily 2-seat Guarantee WSOP super-sats to WSOP sats with 1 WSOP seat added, and they kept running for over 2 months despite massive, massive overlays.

- Hollywood Poker's $20+2 Weekly guarantee tournament. . . with celebrities playing in them with bounties on their heads!

- Watching Phil Hellmuth play at a $2-4 NL table at UB and go on a tirade against some fish in the chat (actually, this is one that might still happen today)

Winning my 1st MTT on a Party Poker New Player $5K Freeroll LIMIT Hold'em tournament. Came in 1st for $1050; still remember the final table fondly. Sadly that's my biggest MTT cash to date

I love this game. It has been a big part of my life for a long time now. I don't have many online memories, as I've only played online less then 2 years, but god do I have a lot of memories from live play.

Sorry, I know this is about online, I just wanted to post saying how much this game has meant to me in my life.

poker

Well, this post I will dedicate to Party Gaming and all of the silliness it offered over the years. Some of these have been covered, buit here is a summary from memory

- Rakeback on their skins. I miss my "Pokernow" account.

- Empire Poker VIP program. The points based on the square root of how many hands played was one of the more amusing random criteria ever. Someone already mentioned how they randomly mailed people TVs as well.

- Stacking multiple bonus codes, and the extra one that worked once for everyone for the lifetime of their account I forget the name, but it was a $100 5x one).

- Their VIP programs. They never made sense. Ever. Either it was so complicated nobody understood it, or it had such flaws that lots exploited it. The 1000 points for a deposit of $500 daily (which was in points like playing several hundred hands) made for some amusing point whoring. Deposit $500 every day in a week, withdraw $3500 at the end. Repeat next week. Maybe play a few rounds of poker for the heck of it. Become a top level VIP.

- Their casino promotions. All I can say is wow. While they always were changing, they often were a total waste of time or else simply too good to be true mainly because nobody there ever did the math behind them.

I believe my favorite involved the following sequences

Every month if you earned 200+ points in the casino you received a nice free play bonus the next month.

For 2-3 days a month they had a special roulette promo which gave rewards based on how much you wagered during that time. Based on that you received a $150 roulette/video poker bonus (no idea why vp was included but it was) that was +120 EV playing VP and also a free play bonus worth $50-500 dollars for roulette.

You could do this while clearing the backlog of $50-100 bonuses they would offer once you played a lot on the casino.

So during those 3 days I would usually clear $200 in old bonuses playing roulette with large equal bets on 1-12, 13-24, 25-36 (because the 1-18 and 19-36 did not count as if they were different somehow) and an appropriate bet on the 0 to offset the loss if one hit. I would generally lose $270 or so while getting a $200 bonus (so guaranteed net loss of 70ish), but that was offset by the $500-1000+ in EV of no risk free bonuses I would receive from being such a heavy "losing player" as well as the huge amount of party points I would accumulate.

This process each month generally took under an hour to do.

Often all of the above would stack with other promotions they were running as well. That ran monthly for over a year, with EV of about $700 per month as a result (sometimes quite a bit more if I got lucky during the free bonuses while using their still to date bug of leaving a table while ahead becomes real money feature even while still clearing a bonus).

- Playing blackjack to clear other bonuses on Party on tables which had some weird side bets that I ignored. The game was the exact same, but you received points at 20-50x the rate of their normal blackjack tables.

- Party Gammons $200 bonus which could be obtained from playing 5-10 games for 50 cents. Most games featured a player resigning after the first move.

- Click a link on their website and $200 was in your account for downgrading a cruise ship room even if you were not on the cruise. This one was actually a pain, because it was not money any real player should accept (I notified them to have it removed and they gave me a $50 bonus - unexpected +EV).

These are all off the top of my head, but I do look back with fond memories at all of the inefficient, poorly thought out promotions that were offered by the Prty Gaming network.

That actually showed the carving up of the game that was occurring. If table limits were reduced I think online poker could be reasonably healthy again.

5 man sngs on Pacific where top 3 get paid. the game doesnt start until you fold into the money.

looking over this thread, do u guys think that the sites were losing money back then or just making a sick amount now that they dont offer the same bonuses...

With Americans essentially barred the competition for the market has shrunk. I know that sites have gotten much cheaper and won't marginally lose/ bust even on bonuses anymore. I remember when a Party skin started offering 20X bonuses I figured out that was the bust even point on the bonus.

Rake races, freerolls, RTR races on top of that at Interpoker. I won a San Remo package. Wonderful trip!

and then... they switched to Boss (right?)... well, it was unplayable.

One reason I think the sites had more money available because back then the Payment Processors did not know they could charge them literally any fee they want, and they just have to take it. Now the sites lose many millions to processor exploitation.

In a regulated market that would not be the case.

Pacific Pokers .25c ring that had the whole table in every hand and larger avg pots then the dollar ring today was fun.

Boy, the way fishes played. Just before the nit parade.
Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days.

Hard to make a big mistake. Everyone called down with 8's.
You still won without the rakeback you'd make. Those were the days.

And you knew where you were at then. Fish slowplayed and 3-bets weren't thin.
Mister, we could use a player like Tuff Fish again.

People seemed to be content. Fifty dollars an hour paid the rent.
Short stacks only came and went. Those were the days.

Take a little Sunday spin, play the Million and you would win.
Have yourself a dandy day that would always end with a grin.

Withdrawals were quick and support was strong. Prahlad Friedman sang his song.
I don't know just what went wrong. Those Were The Days.

wasnt that long ago...maybe a few years. But either Pokerstars or PartyPoker used to display how many people were spectating your sng/tournament in the lobby.

- Bet365 100k$ weekly freerols (propably July 2005?)
- Mansion daily 100k$ gtd with 40k-60k overlays and 1000$ freebet for NFL game (which I wasn't take part because I thought it was too good to be true )

Playing Roy Cooke on Planet Poker.

These are all great. I had completely forgotten about the square root thing! We all knew it was obscure and made no sense but it was actually as good as reward programs got back then so we more joked about than complained. LOL.

lol this clown literally plays a 12/8 game no lie.

I fondly remember so much of this, and am kicking myself at all the things I DON'T remember.

This thread kicks complete ass.

You made me proud, boys!