Thats a perfect example of PB/GL. It's a very common strategy. In fact, I believe that Play bad/Get lucky is the most widely used strategy at the micro level. From what I've seen lately, across multiple sites, it may be the most popular strategy in use online today.
I used to play 50NL until the day I had a series of hands like the one you described. I was getting them in with hands like Aces, Kings, Queens. After a while I wouldn't play less than Jacks and still didn't win a hand in an hour. I've always disregarded that theory that
online poker was rigged, although I never rule out the possibility of cheating. People are greedy and will always try to find a way to take whatever advantage they can. In this case, because of the way these zoo monkeys were throwing their chips around, the only way they could be cheating was to know in advance what the community cards were going to be, since in every case the chips went in before the flop. I'm talking about a raise, a 3-bet, 4-bet, and a shove with 2-6. I call with A-A and lose to trip deuces. K-K loses to J-7 when my opponent hits a 9 high straight. Q-Q vs. 8-3 off, didn't stand a chance. I kept getting up to leave, but kept sitting back down because I just didn't believe that this could keep happening. But it did. I didn't win a single hand in over an hour of playing nothing less than pocket Jacks.
I don't know how they could have been cheating. Here's what I do know. Most of the players were unfamiliar to me, even though I played the same stakes every day at the same time and was used to playing with the same players every day. It wasn't just one player playing this way. Nor was it just one player winning. If you looked that the hand summarys in the chat window, every pot was for $50+.
Eventually I gave up, after losing several hundred dollars in the span of an hour. I've always agreed with the people who say a site wouldn't risk losing the rake they collect by rigging games or anything else that would cost them their player base. Someone suggested that I may have been targeted because I had cashed out $1000 of the $1500
bankroll that had built primarily from
freerolls. Maybe the site would rather have my bankroll back than have my rake. I don't know. I know some people will call it variance. While I might admit that it's possible, I would question how probable it is. I do know that I haven't played any online cash games since. I have thought about it, but I just can bring myself to do it. The funny thing is that I still don't think it's rigged, and can't figure how it could have been cheating. But I still can't come to terms with that many big hands being cracked by absolute rags. I wish I had saved the hand histories from that table so that others could really understand and know that I'm not exagerating.
I didn't mean to hijack your thread, but I guess I still get wound up thinking about it.