Even though many statistics are just numbers, some give you the feeling that things go into the right direction. One of those statistics is the surge in journalistic activity throughout our more than a dozen languages. I tried to make the numbers visible for you in the graph below. It shows the number of news per week on our different language sites with a gentle moving average over seven weeks and a hopefully not too confusing colour-coding.

 

I hope that my readers from Poland, Germany, Portugal & Brazil are not too upset about my choice of colours – but in the end it is not my fault that there is such a limited number of easy-to-distinct colours in the world. And that most countries' flags even restrict to such a small number of them. Red-White-Blue anyone?

Yes, it's true: yesterday, we hit the mark.

The russian user DarkVenom grabbed the user ID 1,000,000. Even though this is just a symbolic number, it still is a great feeling. The fact that still so many people from so many different countries sign up to PokerStrategy.com convinces me that we are on the right path, even if there is so much to be done and improved... I sometimes even lose the greater picture with all its details.

Especially the past few weeks were burdensome with work – most of it under the hood so there are no direct results visible for you –, and this was amongst the reasons why I didn't update this blog for such a time. But as I got a camera from next week onwards, I will finally be able to pack some photos from the office into my posts to make the confidentials a little more vivid.

On the map below you roughly see how much traffic is coming from which country. Germany still marks the #1, but our internationalization is a great story, as well. When I marked our headquarters in Gibraltar with a red dot, I noticed that this dot is nearly in the centre of the map. A sign?

 

 

Probably tomorrow we will release a nice new feature: traffic statistics for the big five poker networks. You will be able to see long-term trends, but also be able to retrieve information like: "I play No-Limit on the middle limits. If I play around 12 p.m. GMT, on which site can I expect most traffic?"

Specifically, you will be able to select:

1. Gametype (Hold'em, Omaha...)
2. Limit (FL, NL, PL)
3. Stakes (Micro, Low, Mid, High, Ultra)

And you will be able to select trend over a specific historic period (up to 1 year into the past) as well as a daytime graph. We hope you will enjoy this feature both as infotainment and a worthy source of recherche for whether to try a network or not. 

 

 

Last time I already announced that I want to add some photos to this blog – e.g. to show you our office life or to introduce some of our staff. But sadly, the office ghost did not only hide one of our two LCD projectors very well, it did so with our small digi-cam, too. And Pius needs the big one for the Black Member Party in Munich this weekend.

So I have to say sorry for this time and promise that I will add photos soon! My up to know only real idea is that I could take some person working for PokerStrategy.com – like someone from the IT whom you normally do not meet in news or forums –, take a few photos and talk to him and do a kind of mixed office life and interview blog post here. If you got better suggestions, go on!

Besides that, I think that I will have to improve my overall blogging quality. A poll on our German page showed that I seem to be the least attractive board of our main PokerStrategy.com blogs. Sad :(

But partially I blame it on the language and the fact that I'm ranked really low on the German blog overview and because of that, many people rarely ever visit me. But I see it as a challenge – arrr!

 

Cooking Duel 

In fact, there is something I can write about. Last sunday, we did a 2 vs. 2 cooking duel. Teams were:

Tom (Tech Lead)
Marcus (Business Administration)
vs.
Rebecca (Marcus' girlfriend)
Lutz (me)

As I expected, it was not an easy, but a clear victory!
The jury was composed of all four combattants (we tend to be honest ;)) plus Fenris and my girlfriend Nadia. We won 14-9 in score in this close fight. The system we use is as follows: each team buys a basket of ingredients which the other team has to cook with. Of course you can make it difficult that way for the opposite team, but in the end, you want to eat it yourself – so you stay fair.

If you're interested, I'd also describe the ingredient packages and what we created out of it, but right now I do not want to strech your audience too much. Have a good night! 

 

 

Dear Community,

my most sincere apologies for my recent inactivity on this blogs. A stuffed work schedule is no excuse for that - like answering emails is always a must, keeping active here should be one, too. But sometimes it is hard if you can't think of a nice topic right away. (Yes, this is a request towards you to help me out and suggest some topics ;P.)

So now, at "late night" in the office, I will try to give you an overview of what we are currently doing, espeically with a focus on what awaits you in the next weeks.

* Summer Frenzy and the Euro Cup are through, so these things need to be finalized. Winners getting their payments & news, analyzing effects, planning follow-up promotions. 

* PokerRoom.com will join the ranks of our partner sites soon.

* We will offer a really great bonus (much better than ever!) on Titan Poker in July

* We are hiring and will be giving away $1.000 for people who "recruit their friends" for PokerStrategy.com

* Our social network release 1 should go public in about one month

* Forum structure in some languages - like already done in the English forums - will be done to improve usability

* We will improve our conversion process including quiz to help our new customers and all our diligent TaF users

* ...

If I look at this list and all the other things that are in my mind, there should be even enough to do daily updates. Plus I could write more about office life - and add a few photos. But then again, I still do not got a digi cam. 

Now I have to visit my email folder again and then go to sleep. Bon nuit!