[throwaway30yo]

Reminds me of the old days of online poker. The regulars would sit around for hours just waiting for an unskilled opponent. They would almost never play each other.

Eventually the whale would leave and the game would instantly break. The ecosystem was so broken but sustained for a long period because so much money was being shovelled in.

[GoatOfAplomb]

At the most popular sites, at popular limits, during the peak years, there were plenty of poor players to go around. We had databases of player behaviors, and consulted them to find juicy games, but there was enough to go around that games didn't really break over losing a fish or two.

I do agree that the process you described occurred, basically whenever one of my above assumptions didn't hold - unpopular sites/high limits/post-boom.