Here’s the fourth article in our special retrospective series, where we look back at some of the top poker articles we’ve published throughout each year we’ve been online. Here are the first three articles in the series, from 2010, 2011, and 2012. The year 2013 marked a breakthrough for Cardplayer Lifestyle. Our site traffic more than doubled, rising from just under 2,000 unique monthly visitors to an average of 4,000. A big part of that growth came thanks to several well-known poker players and media personalities who began following us on social media and kindly sharing our content; something for which I remain thankful to this day.
That year, I came to understand that there was a direct connection between the time and energy I invested into running the site and the growth and engagement of our audience. As such, we ramped up the output of fresh, exciting, and engaging poker content, giving readers plenty of reasons to keep coming back. It was incredibly motivating then, and it remains the case now.
Top Poker Pros Start Paying Attention
I interviewed Ari Engel for the first time that year. I remember thinking how cool it was that was had similar backgrounds, attended the same yeshiva, and shared a love for poker. Seeing someone like me achieving success as a poker pro was so cool, I just HAD to learn his back story. Ari and I have since become good friends, having seen each other numerous times over the years at stops all over the poker world.
Phil Hellmuth first took notice of Cardplayer Lifestyle in 2013. I happened to noticed that, at the time, he only followed 13 people on Twitter. At the time, he had won 13 WSOP bracelets. The juxtaposition was too uncanny to ignore, so I wrote about it. When Phil retweeted the article, it led to the highest-trafficked day in the site’s history. He’s since shown tremendous kindness towards me, has often shared this site’s content, has agreed for me to interview him on multiple occasions, and has very generously donated to charitable causes I’ve helped fundraise for. He’s still pretty selective though, following just over 50 people now on X. Maybe someday I’ll be one of them. 🙂
I was already a huge Daniel Negreanu fan back in 2013. I noticed when he was doing press that he often mentioned his personal assistant, Patty Landis. That got me curious: who was this woman? So I asked if she’d do an interview with me. Daniel noticed. The publication of this article marked the start of a couple great friendships that I still cherish. Both Patty and Daniel have done me kindnesses too innumerable to count. I’m so grateful that they both instantly realized I genuinely cared and wanted to really get to know them “not just for the clicks”.
Some Articles Start Going Viral
As with most things in life, you “get out what you put in”. In 2013 I started putting a lot more thought and effort into thinking of topics for articles that would resonate strongly and likely attract an audience of interested readers. These ranged from strategy articles like 25 Bad Habits That Are Costing You Money at the Poker Tables, to op-ed pieces where I suggested a number of “safe” and “unsafe” topics for discussion at the table, to some creative writing, in which I tried to engage some of my fellow professional wrestling fans with articles like this and this., along with doing a deep dive on who would be the best poker player among the How I Met Your Mother cast of characters.
Thousands of people read each of those articles “back in the day” as well as over subsequent years. If you’ve never read them, they’re all more or less evergreen, so perhaps you’ll enjoy reading them now, too. Thankfully, many more articles we’ve published in the years since have reached countless thousands of readers as well.
A Serious Poker Media Site…
Cardplayer Lifestyle’s transition from “just a poker blog” into a more serious, well-respected poker media site continued in earnest throughout 2013. While I still did the overwhelming majority of the writing — quite literally close to 100% of it — occasionally I started welcoming topic/article submissions from some experts. For instance, my friend Eddie Harari happens to be one of the world’s top cybersecurity professionals… AND he loves poker. When he asked if he could write an article providing expert analysis of online poker, I couldn’t refuse that offer. Eddie has contributed at least another half dozen articles to Cardplayer Lifestyle since then (at least one of which will appear in a future installment of this series).
But Still with a Playful Side
With all that said, we still showed our more playful side with articles like What Questions Did 21 Famous Poker Pros Have for Santa Claus. I memorably recall Chino Rheem and Tom Dwan taking the jokes in stride and kindly retweeting that piece to spread some joy and good holiday cheer. Looking back at that one, it’s also a uniquely interesting window into which pros were “buzziest” a dozen years ago.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention our tongue-in-cheek critique of The Coldest WSOP in History, in which I asked my (then) 3.5-year-old son to play the role of WSOP Air Conditioning Technician. Good times! 🙂
