[nickjj]

Back in the mid-2000s some places had crazy incentives like PokerStars. They had a form of rakeback where you could sit and grind out hands while playing break even'ish poker but still net $100,000 a year back then. The idea there was you could play ~16 tables at a time for ~25 hours a week making robotic decisions based on odds or a quick glance at PokerTracker's HUD.

There's a write up about it here: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2010/08/making-supernova-elit...

There were other places as well. There were so many stories posted on the 2+2 forums[0] of people making really good money doing this. That's one of the most popular poker forums. It's interesting because it's a different type of skill. Tile a bunch of windows, have a lot of mental fortitude and grind it out. It's a completely different strategy than trying to become a "winning" player.

I used to play microstates back before online poker was banned in the US so I didn't participate in that. What's funny though is even back then at the 5c-10c ($10 buy in) or 10c-25c ($25 buy in) NL tables you'd have folks 4-6 tabling while looking at a PokerTrack HUD which gathered stats about players and displayed them above their name plate. I can't imagine at how much the game must have progressed since then.

[0]: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/