Oct 4th 2018, 22:17:18
Could have been that many slots, but players were many and most didn't really stay in for the long term ... there was a lot of churn - but because you had to kerp the same name in tourney to progress up the ladder, you would see familar names over and over in the A and B-C levels. If you did particularly well in lower levels, you could jump more than one level. Anyway, the way i remember it, about half the players in the top 2 tiers were consistent regulars. And maybe that many again scattered in the lower levels. That would still have been less than 1000. Then, there were many who played up thru the levels for a year or so and then disappeard. So my impression as a a regular was that there were hundreds of other good players involved as well as a big group of motivated newbies, swimming in a sea of transient poor players. So staying in gameA became something of an accomplishment, but vets commonly doublle jumped the early levels to reach A-B-C in only 2 or 3 months.
So i stick with my estimate of perhaps the regulars and motivated newbies together numbered 1000 +/- .... the rest were little better than bots, but sometimes provided big comic relief, which bots never ever do.