For me it was Paradise Poker... I made 70K in 8 months playing LimitHU, 3-6.
Hardly a button raiser in sight.

No fond memories of the old days. Being able to earn 4 figures a month off of bonuses while playing extremely mediocre poker was nice and terrible at the same time. The UIGEA was the best thing that ever happened to my poker game.

+1000000

Just thinking about the Pacific players and I'm starting to drool...

Juk

i remember the party sng's when you could fold into the money.

ability? what ability? the ability to exploit a flawed system that gives them rakeback based on rake they didnt even play and to have to use all sorts of software to do it and then have the audacity to comoplain the rake is too high-no thanks
ill make more than them actually playing poker and playing 3 or 4 tables to do it

if thats how they make their living fine-but dont act like they arent short sided untalented and ruining the games

When I had 73% rakeback on iPoker with a LEGAL deal that only involved me upgrading to VIP5 hence earning more points but that's it

If things were to magically revert to January 1st, 2003, only I could take everything I know now in terms of poker ability/knowledge, bonus clearing, etc., I think it's safe to say that it would be trivially easy to make over a million dollars.

Just looking at what passed for cutting-edge theory back then, it's so cute and quaint.

Remember when Paradise was the top of the heap, and the target of the original "rigged" conspiracy theories?

Hehe, word!

bonuswhores... that was the place
doing cryptos every month
having accounts on 5 party skins and being one of the first to 16 table across omaha hi-lo limit
having accounts on 9 ongame skins and using them to 10BB shortstack on bonus money and get around ratholing rules

those were the days

if i had known how much legislation and software were going to ruin the games i would have played 16-20 hours a day for 3 straight years and looked up and laughed at how much money i made and been set for life
i wish i wasnt so lazy

Nobody else has either. It's kind of a ghost town.

Homer's BW sticky

Playing 9 million hands of $1 blackjack to clear casino bonuses

Being able to play on Pinnacle and all the sweet sportbook bonuses u could arb

I remember playing on pacific poker, and playing with all the gamblers that gave poker a try for fun.

I remember that I did exactly ONE sticky, and it took a lot of balls to make myself do it, one $100 bet on a hand of blackjack. I lost the bet and felt shell-shocked for a whole day (Christ, what a baby) and I never did another one.

If I'd had anything resembling a fully separate and decent-sized bankroll for such things, or the appropriate attitude about gambling, both of which I finally attained only after it was too late, hoo boy. Nowadays I would effortlessly and fearlessly hammer through those. Some people made five figures on stickies alone.

My greatest regret from that era is that I never actually built a bankroll with the money I made then. I just paid the rent and bought groceries with it, thinking that it would last forever and that I could eventually start building with it. I took for complete granted that one could make $10-20/hr merely playing breakeven poker, simply from the bonuses alone, before even factoring in 2004-level fishiness (to say nothing of the hourly rate on some of those casino bonuses).

Yeah, the laziness thing that rounder mentioned. I too was waaaay too lazy. I took advantage of only a tiny chunk of what was out there, only putting in just enough effort to make ends meet. God damn.

Hmm, lets see.

- Doing a PSO promotion to get the first season WPT DVD set, I think at Aztec Poker.

- 12 tabling $25 buy in PL Holdem on Party to clear $100-200 bonuses in under 2 hours, with a decent win rate literally playing the most straight forward poker possible.

- 1/2 limit on the cryptos. Nobody played it because they enjoyed it.

- Wondering how I would ever finish all of the monthly casino bonuses, especially in December when they tended to have all sorts of crazy promos.

- Doing a solitaire bonus. Seriously.

- Interpoker's pocket Kings promo. Silliness.

It's interesting when I think about the bonuses back in those days and what a massively different world it was.

When it comes to the bottom line of all the casinos/cardrooms, they were either taking a huge bath back then, or they're just incredibly stingy and greedy now. It can only be one or the other.

I would drop in and play 55/40 sometimes, enjoy the hell out of it, and make a nice chunk of change at the same time. Probably what led me to eventually liking 1/2 full on Stars as well. I wonder if there will be any limit game left for nitbaiting this year.

Wasn't as profitable as the Stud games though. I'm terrible at Stud high, but those people were something else.

Pontoon tilted me so badly. I ran so bad at that game but ran really good at blackjack. I'm going to be tilted for the rest of the day just thinking of Pontoon.

Not sure if anyone mentioned it but getting your casino bonuses in pounds even if you were a US player, etc. Also the casinos with autoplay that would play perfect blackjack with just a couple changes. Easy way to make a couple hundred while sleeping back in the day.

not really greedy it was a way to attract new players and its just a much different market - there was also basically no rakeback back then and as far as us sites were concerned, the transaction costs were much lower
im sure there was also a lot of trial and error involved especially on the casino bonuses

The 5x playthrough bonuses.

10 sec cashouts via Neteller.

The Gaming Club OIC promo.

Ahhhh . . .

the mansion steelers promo and playing keno to clear the sign up bonus right after. Should have seen the warning signs that the casino bonus industry was about to collapse when playing keno was the optimal way to clear a bonus lol.

Back when you had a good chance of finishing ITM just by joining a sng and sitting out the entire match.

this thread inspired me to look at old internet bonus posts I made

those Mansion threads came up... that was so sweet

Empire Poker mailing TV's to people without telling anyone they were sending them, and with no indication/markings on the packaging about what it was or where it came from.

86. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.