Back in the late 90's they (AOL) had a pay service for different varieties of online poker. They had other interactive games as well. I believe they partenered up with a service named 'Masque.' Basically, you paid $2.95 an hour for play money poker against hundreds of opponents. It was very popular at first and eventually they lowered the price to 99 cents an hour. Ultimately, the service was eliminated with the proliferation of free sites like 24 hour poker. They made use of bots to fill up tables. If you were the first person sitting down you could play against all bots. In fact, some players actually preferred to play against the bots! Many games were a combination of bots and real players.

Generally speaking, the bots sucked. The strategy for beating them was betting extremely strong and even capping pots with nothing. They would almost always fold unless they had the nuts or something close to the nuts. The smarter bots actually had a little more play in them and would occasionally bluff and weren't as easily pushed off a strong hand. Anyways, it was a lot of fun at the time because they didn't have real money online poker (Planet eventually came along). People played for a high monthly or overall point standing. The better players got bored with the game and creatively devised new ways to sustain their interest. For example, many tables were designed as 'raise or fold.' I remember a really good play money stud player named JeffreyLV. He was almost always the monthly leader and was the overall money leader for the longest time. I surmise he would really excel at online poker and wonder what happened to him (he said he played 15-30 and 20-40 limit in the casinos). Anyways, I have many fond memories of Masque poker and now laugh at how much money I paid to play fake money poker! Some months the bill was around 500 dollars!

JeffreyREBT - The Aronsonman of online poker

"Wherein I don't promise to make you rich without trying, or even trying very hard; I do promise to say things that will make you FEEL rich."