Titan Poker back in 2005-2006. I just started playing and there were dozens of private freerolls ranging from $100 to $1k+ every single day, most of them having a very limited amount of players. The fun in that was trying to find/hack the password together with a bunch of friends and build my bankroll with free monies.

Bad thing to do? Yes. Exciting? Yes.

come on, its two years! tell us

playing on pokerroom.com in 2003, i used to love those avatars

playing on boss media when you could only 1 table, sitting at 5 max cash games with 2 guys from Ankara and 2 guys from Istanbul who I'm sure thought Folding was not allowed

also in May 2005 when Boss Media introduced 5 Card Draw the day before a big university exam.

i had never played it before but found some basic odds on the internet, was so unbelievably soft, meaning i was playing 5 card draw with one hand whilst trying to hold an Economics text book in the other

Remember when all players got to play in the same player pool?

Inconceivable!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

this thread brought a tear to my eye

back in 03` I was playing for fun on Pacific.I was 15y old and had no any means of depositing(lucky for me) so I was playing freerolls.

Now, if real money was like that, imagine what freerolls were
There was a 2 000 player one, which was later increased to 2 500 and if I remember correctly ITM was 20-something.
One day I finished 21st for like 0.80$ Jeez,if only I could review that HH today, it would be mega LOLs.

Unfortunately soon I have stopped playing and did not bother returning until late `10.
I ofc keep thinking ..."If I knew back then what I know now"

Oh the memories I only started playing in 2006, so the best bonuses were gone. I'm surprised though that no one mentioned the William Hill monthly bonus that cleared at like $10/hour per table. Was playing micro stakes at the time and I think you had to play NL100 or FL200 to get it. So I played stud and played 3-4 tables to clear it in about an hour. Had no idea how to play stud though, but that didn't matter - with the rakeback and the bonus I was a bit above break-even anyway. Just when I started understanding the game they ended the bonus

http://archives2.twoplustwo.com/show...fpart=all&vc=1

Those Party raked hands bonuses had such a huge impact on my roll building. Started playing NL5 there in 2007 and I think those bonuses were more than 100bb/100, in addition I think that my winrate at a point was 24bb/100 for 10k hands when playing fullring NL5. NL10 was a lot tougher though Not that it mattered, since there were so many kick-back bonuses that I could get 100%+ in rakeback for raking about $150 when creating new accounts on Ipoker so I was quickly rolled for NL25.

Do you guys remember when winning 10blinds/100 was considered standard for good players? If you made less than that then you most likely had huge leaks.

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...fpart=all&vc=1

I remember running like 6 or 8 cents to 3k on stars starting @ 1c 2 c FLHE tables and then losing it all @ 30-60 in 20 mins

Remember having just about the entire 3-6 to 10-20 FLHU lobby to myself for about 6 months on stars in 2009 and then about 20 russians showed up

So I went to Carbon and got their lobby to myself while everyone was fighting over FTP and Stars

Remember knocking out SBRUGY in the final 24 in my first MTT win for 4-5k and thought I was god. I final tabled the same one the next night

The good old days!

I remember way back when people actually hated a teenage poker site founder. The players who got screwed actually pretended they had no idea a site run by a teenager from an apartment had a high risk for failure. Times have sure changed. Now players get screwed over by adults who own their own homes, as it should be.

I'd also have been surprised if no one had mentioned it, but that's back in the first handful of posts:

A little taste of what it was like at the end:

http://internettexasholdem.com/poker...ls-t40631.html

http://internettexasholdem.com/poker...ad-t48273.html

Yeah, I played on a few sites back then:

The numbers are nothing compared to a modern high-volume SNE grinder or similar, but this was all from part-time 1 or 2 tabling at $1/2-$3/6 limit. I seem to recall I was putting in about 100-200 table hours/month.

A little sample of the Paradise multiple-reload silliness:

http://internettexasholdem.com/poker...us-t48665.html

I think we did a lot more experimenting with those over at BonusWhores, but those forums are gone now AFAIK.

Bobo, what did they call the extra play a whore would give a site after the bonus was cleared so as not to appear a whore? Cover play? Things were nuts back then. I would like to read some old archived threads from bw if possible. It would make a funny book today.

Yeah, cover play, which people would do at sites where they gave out juicy reloads and players were worried that they wouldn't get them if they were too obvious with the bonus whoring. I think that was a little overblown and never really bothered. But then, I wasn't maxing out my opportunities by playing full time, so there was more than enough awesome bonuses for me even if I was unknowingly denied some good reloads.

I guess people might have also used cover play at sites where they worried they might actually be denied a cashout for bonus abuse, but that's also something I didn't ever find to be a problem. Of course, the speed of cashouts certainly helped there - sites weren't holding on to your money for weeks, or even days. More than 24-48 hours to cashout to an ewallet was pretty slow.

Jek, that guy was awesome. I wonder if he's still alive?

Yeah it's cover play. People would do it at sites where they gave out juicy reloads and players would be concerned about not getting them if they were obviously a bonus whore.

Kind of funny to think of a time where after you cleared the sites bonus terms you had to worry about being labeled a bonus abuser by that site and all the sites they were associated with. I always felt the cover play was insurance not just for the site you just played on, but all the sites in that network still waiting to be whored.

Ohh those sweet old days!

Will Hill - "old faithful" as my team used to call it.

That funny hourly bonus lasted a while, but the fun certainly did not end there with that room.

Some of this is from my memory, but this will give some perspective to how Will Hill was (and why a friend of mine in my casino whoring group with a last name of Hill considered naming his son William).

We never did a single dollar of intentional cover play (was never a need on Cryptos as it was all automated).

Will Hill had a free $100 or more sign up casino bonus and $40+ each month for free for a long time, in addition to their hourly poker bonus.

After they finally dropped the hourly bonus (took years), they also changed the casino one, which at first looked not worth it.

That was until one discovered that doing pass and don't pass on Craps (because 0 EV odds bet helped clear the requirements) generated an EV of $35 or so a month for 5-10 minutes work.

Then of course there was the video poker 4 handed jacks or better bonus for $1,000 a month with an EV of around $900-950 that last ed for a year (granted with high variance).


We also cannot forget the MPP freeroll tournaments (Will Hill only) they had quite often that were worth a few hundred in value each month for not a ton of requirements. Many just never knew they existed.


Oh yeah, one last semi-important note, people could according to their rules have multiple accounts, and if you created them on different computes they all received the bonus. I was conservative and went with only 8 (I could barely finish 1-2 VP bonuses at the time, so I paid others to play for me), though some people had a couple dozen accounts. If I had an issue and called they would politely ask me which account I was calling about.


Many who experienced the "good old days" did not fully experience them!

8 accounts on Will Hill eh? How many on Intertops?

Keep in mind that to create an affiliate account with Will Hill in the days, they told you that you had to create another account, and if you wanted multiple affiliate accounts the best way was to create an account for each.


Regarding Intertops - I had one account (from about 2003 or so). Intertops was on the Party network, so one Intertops account, one Party account, one Empire account, one Poker Now account , one Coral (I think it was called) account for that network, which is what was allowed. We never violated the terms and conditions of any room, the last thing any of us would ever do is multi account at a poker table or tournament - and forget the moral reasons, it would be beyond stupid just for the lack of any benefit of it relative to what we were doing.

Party had some beyond great casino bonuses (and a few before they had Party Casino with their I forget the name of the two casinos), and the Coral (if I have that name right) had a great monthly casino bonus, albeit the software was tilting slow. Poker Now was my "rakeback" skin. Empire I just did bonuses on when available.

For what it is worth, I spoke to the people at the Cryptologic network a lot (Sun Poker, Interpoker) and explained to them how flawed their network was, but they made it clear they knew what they were doing, so I just accepted that and realized best approach was to brutalize it until the network went under, which was a certainty.

I spoke to Sun Poker rep a few months ago (before they shut down the poker room), and he read my account notes from years ago and they were great (all of the previous management was not shockingly long gone).

Oh yeah, Interpoker not Intertops. Cryptologic was also traded on the Nasdaq and had some interesting dynamics between management and shareholders.

Bluescouse