First of all, you have a couple things incorrect here. Chase is not once forever. There is a long waiitng time, and it may not be as well defined as Citi AA, but people do eventually get bonuses again. So from a "year after year" perspective, one of the keys is to "rotate" what you do in diffeerent years, so that after 2 or 3 years you can come back and repeat what you did 2 or 3 years ago.
Second, the Citi 12 to 26 month rule (18 months doesn't work for everyone) is just for AA cards. It does not apply to Hilton HHonors cards:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...nors-visa.html
where Citi doesn't necessarily stop you from getting 100k, 200k, maybe even 300k or more on that card alone just by applying for (up to 2 at a time) as quickly (but no more ofteh than 2 Citi apps for any type of cards within 65 days) as you can meet the $1500 spend on each card.
It also does not apply to any of the TYP cards (of which there are several).
And btw, that points out something else: Different points are valued completely differentl. For example, 500k points in many hotel programs (Hilton HHonors, Marriott, Priority Club, Choice, Best Western, etc) is worth maybe
roughly 100k legacy airline miles or 100k SPG points (in that converting miles to points in those hotel programs is done at a 4:1, 5:1, or 6:1 ratio; the worth if actually used for hotel stays may or may not be higher). So adding everything up that's in different "miles/points" currencies makes little sense, but lots of people do, and that inflates their totals.
And too many of the people accumulating lots of stuff are accumulating anything and everything, not caring how useful it is, just to "show off", and/or just because they'll figure out a use for it later. People who are concentrating on collecting just in a couple airlines and a couple hotel programs typically do not get the huge totals that people who don't mind keeping track of 25 programs (airline, hotel, train, creidt card etc) can get.
Another thing to watch out for in posts: Many people post totals not just for themselves, but including their spouse/partner. So they're getting double what anyone alone would have gotten with the same strategy. IMHO that's misleading to post as a single number (wihtout clearly stating
every single time that it's for 2 people), but if you're just scanning posts quickly for totals you may not realize how often that is going on. (Just look at the post above mine for an example; the poster there calls it "getting more" if you have a spouse/partner! No,
per person, you're not getting more, and IMHO it should be listed always per person to be comparable from one poster to the next!)