Surprised by how many people are reading this blog

So what to do when not playing poker?
Answer, mess around with the blogging site and find some interesting pages.

There is a stats page which shows me how many views my blog is receiving and where they are coming from, so I thought I'd share them with you all.

When I post a new entry this blog is getting around 90 hits on that day! I was quite shocked as I thought no one was reading it. It also tells me where the hits are coming from, which are thus.

Half are being referred from my facebook page which makes sense as I always put it as my status when I update the blog, the rest are finding it from all places.

It also tells me which countries are reading my blog, unsurprisingly around 75% of the views have been from the UK, around 10% have come from the USA, bit weird as I only have a few US friends but I guess cos they can't play poker in the states they like to read about it maybe? The strangest stat is that 5% of the people who view my blog are from Russia or the Ukraine. Now I know nobody from either of these countries so I wonder who these people are, I'd love it if they made themselves known.

If any of the Ukranians wanna give me tickets to Euro 2012 that'd be great!

I'm getting a lot of views from Gibraltar but I know a few people over there who work in the gaming industry so that's not surprising.

Someone found my blog by searching for 'hyper turbo poker blogspot' on google! weird!!

Even when I went two weeks without updating the blog it was still getting about 5 hits a day and I have set it to discount any of my visits.

So what have I done today. played five a side, I hope Wayne Rooney doesn't read my blog cos I'm gonna talk about what my great 5-a-side team did today. (if you don't get this joke, read the FAQs blog from a while ago)

It was the last two matches from our 5 team group stages with top two making the cup semis tonight. We had to win both games to get through. Had a few problems getting players tonight as everyone was busy but we turned up with five, Damion in goal as usual, me and Aaron who play almost every week and then Colin and Mikey. Got off to a good start, I played Mikey through and the keeper saved the one on one but then inexplicably rolled the ball out to Mikey who scored to put us 1-0 up. We then gave up a strange goal, shot from a weird angle it went between Damion's legs and in at the near post for 1-1. We were still on top though, then Aaron played me through I went to hit it first time with my right, missed the ball, slipped, it hit my left leg bounced in front of me as I was falling, I swung my right at it, just connected and it trickled past the keeper and in off the post! I'd like to see you do that Rooney!!!

Then disaster, Colin turned his ankle and couldn't put any weight on it. We didn't had a sub and there was still about 9 minutes left to play with just 4 men. we defended resolutely with Damion making some good saves, I was knackered cos had to run non stop, we had a few chances, Mikey missed a one on one, I hit a snap shot right into the keepers face and a couple of other efforts. Then with 2 minutes to go they had a shot, it bounced back off Damion to their player who managed to knock it into a pretty open net. This really knocked us as we knew we had to win really, couldn't push forwards cos we were shagged out and ended up conceding again with about 30 seconds left after a weird deflection off the wall gave them an easy chance.

So we lost that one, Colin couldn't play the second game cos of his injury, we managed to rope in one of the lads from the team that just beat us to play. I found it hard cos had worked so hard in the previous game. We went 2-0 down but then Aaron scored a decent goal with his left to make it 2-1 but was soon 3-1. I scored another with about 2 minutes left to make it 3-2 but we just didn't have it in us to score again. Had Colin not got injured I'm pretty confident we'd have won both of those games but sometimes it's just not meant to be.

Went the quiz afterwards, had to sit through the Fulham Liverpool game first which meant a shortened quiz and we couldn't even hear the questions cos there were so many people in the pub. We did crap but at least Fulham won so the bet I put up on facebook won, had £27 at 3/1.

Had fun though, Aaron did lots of magic tricks to keep Naomi happy (she's not a child, she just enjoys it) Talked a bit about the 80's night. Don't need to get dressed up which is kind of a shame, but we'll all just get very very drunkled for it!!

So now I'm watching the american football, my fantasy team has made the play offs tonight, hooray! Wow, life gets kind of boring without poker, I think I'll get stuck into football manager tomorrow!

Seeing as I won't be playing for the rest of the year if any of my friends (Who live locally) want a little coaching session I'm more than happy to help. Hopefully can help your game slightly. For those who live further away I can help you too but would need to chat over MSN or FB whilst watching your game and you can tell me your hands and I can give advice. You'll need to be a quick typist for that but believe it or not that's how I got taught how to play well.

I put that bit in bold so people could see it clearly.

I'm also free for lunch in the day times, or drinks in the evenings so if anyone is bored or going out then let me know and I'll probably come along. Or if anyone is going concourse gym or for a run, let me know and I'll struggle along with you.

Nothing much to add right now hope everyone is happy :)

Jon