I hit the front page with ClassicVideoPoker.com (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37763098) and got around 52k hits that day. That was over 1.5 years ago, and to this day, I still get a steady stream of users. A small percentage of them return daily to play, with some racking up hundreds of hours.

Unfortunately, I wasn't running any decent stats at the time, but I see now that I'm still getting referrals from "hackernewsletter," although I'm not sure of the source.

It was great to see the traction, but at the same time, it terrified me. I had all kinds of plans: logins, contests, a community, and new retro-styled games. Unfortunately, the "HN effect" paralyzed me. I was too afraid to push updates, fearing I might break something and lose the users I had. That fear persists even today, with a much smaller but extremely loyal user base.

That was from my newsletter: https://hackernewsletter.com/. :)

Here was the issue: https://mailchi.mp/hackernewsletter/672