Today, my spam-catching hotmail inbox shows messages addressed to... * aspiring writers * refinancing homeowners * parents of small children * someone dating a girl named "jenny" * someone with plans to have dinner with "sandy" * diabetics Now, I am actually none-of-the-above. But I would imagine that a message sent to, say, everyone on this list would actually manage to hit quite a few positives on a few of these. When you send out 20,000 messages, it's a probability game. And if all they want is for you to read the first line (and decide that you *do* want Britney Spears, nude!, or $60,000 in three weeks, or discounts on *everything*), then they have a wide enough variety of subject lines that it would start catching readers. The cricket ad might have been done by a shotgun approach, or by an only-slightly-refined method (for example, keeping a little bit of contextual information about where they found your address, and guessing a little further from there). Danyel