This Blog Goes to Eleventy-One

Nigel Tufnel:  The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi:  Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel:  Exactly.
Marty DiBergi:  Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel:  Well, it's one louder, isn't it?  It's not ten.  You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten.  You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar.  Where can you go from there?  Where?
Marty DiBergi:  I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel:  Nowhere.  Exactly.  What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi:  Put it up to eleven?
Nigel Tufnel:  Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi:  Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel:  [pause] These go to eleven.

—This Is Spinal Tap

One of my readers emailed last week to tell me I had reached a milestone of sorts—100 blog posts.  I hadn't really thought much of it and hadn't intended to commemorate it, when it occurred to me that I could establish eleventy-one (111) as my base blog milestone.  After all, 100 as a milestone is just as arbitrary a number as 111, and I happen to have liked eleventy-one since I first stumbled across it in fifth grade while reading The Fellowship of the Ring (a major event early in the story is Bilbo Baggins' eleventy-first birthday party).  It really comes as no surprise that 111 has a variety of fascinating mathematical and "magical" properties, which should come in handy at the poker table.  Perhaps most important, 111 is a palindromic number, which gives me an advantage when pushing all-in against Santa Claus.

I installed Google analytics during the first week of the blog, and it's interesting to check in periodically to see how many people are reading my blog, and what they are reading.  There seems to be a core of 200ish of y'all that follow crAAKKer semi-regularly, but in total there have been over 2,200 "absolute unique visitors" (apparently unique IP addresses) from 43 countries and 893 cities scattered around the globe, making over 12,500 visits in total.  Nowhere near Poker Grump numbers, but a lot more readers than I had imagined this early in the process.

Although I expected such an intelligent and thoughtful bunch to prefer my lengthy "law & poker" posts, imagine my surprise to learn you actually visit for the poker candy in my IMOP and "hilarity ensues" posts.  There have been fewer comments than I had anticipated, most likely because my posts are always completely correct, but possibly because my posts are boring or non-controversial.  Or, some of my posts may suffer from "TLDR" syndrome (too long, didn't read).  But, my style is what it is, so if I feel a long post is appropriate, that's what you'll get. You certainly know you'll get your money's worth from crAAKKer!

One of the fun things I monitor are the Google searches that land people on crAAKKer.  Some of them are obvious ("yaks", "ironman of poker"), but a few are amusing or even head-scratchingly absurd:

• "evil east germans"
• "5s2s five seconds to safety" (surprise!)
• "yoyo olympics"
• "bestiality blogspot"  (just have to wonder about that query)
• "david begnaud gay"
• "fast booze"
• "invasion of the nits poker"
• "meadows gay poker"
• "mickelson 6'4" tall"  (umm, OK ...)
• "poker insults"  (our target audience, natch)
• "tom dwans office"  (more important than his sexual preference!)

The blogging process itself has been an interesting learning experience.  Early on, I worried about running out of topics to write about, but I find I tend to have 3-6 blog ideas in "draft" form at any given time, waiting for me to return to them for fleshing out and publication.  Occasionally, I'll delete a draft post when I decide the idea just wasn't as interesting as I had thought, or I can't think of an angle to write about that hasn't already been covered by someone I follow elsewhere, or a draft simply goes OTBE (overtaken by events).  I would like to add a few more live poker session reports, or at least posts that spring out of live poker sessions, but my poker playing has been a little limited recently, and the sessions I have played just weren't all that inspirational or entertaining, for whatever reason.  But, I'll try my hardest to get a little more #hilarityensues back in crAAKKer over the summer; this blog truly is capable of going to eleventy-one!

In any event, thanks to everyone who has supported this little poker outpost the past five months, whether by reading, commenting, or shooting me ideas for posts.  I think my favorite author said it best:

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

—Bilbo Baggins in "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien