Updates

January 4th

Well the New Year is here.....Hooray.  I had a nice New Years Eve with my family.  I actually got a little tipsy at my brothers house and exposed my website and bet to everyone.  They all pretty much thought I was crazy and asked if it was a joke.  I then called Mr. X and allowed him to confirm the bet over the phone.  I think je was drunk too because he said regardless of the hits he would be willing to go to $1.5 million if I would bet outright my finger for the cash on April 18th!  That sounds intriguing but if I can just get to 2 million hits I won't have to worry about the possibility of even losing a finger.  As you can see I did take some advice ad incorporated a google search bar into the site as a way of making a little money in the interim.  To be honest though no one really uses it so I may take it down.

Every day I keep getting media requests but to be honest I am  little nervous about exposing myself and my family in the media outside this website.  We live a pretty quiet and simple life right now, and to be quite honest I don't want it to change.

Now if you can believe this, the first two copycat sites to SaveMyFinger have arrived.  You can see them at www.PreventMyCastration.com & www.SaveMyPenis.com.  Yes I am not joking, these is really a websites.  I am pretty sure these are an advertising gimmick piggybacking on all the traffic that this site has gotten, but nonetheless they are there.  It actually doesn't bother me that at all.  If anything it might help to send more traffic and awareness to my cause.  I even bought one of the pixels on the second site with some Christmas money I received.

I am considering changing the poker site that we play the match at from  PokerRoom.com to a different site but I am not sure to where yet.  I have had several emails from different online poker websites, but I am going to ask Mr.X for some help deciding on this one. If anyone would like to play me heads up at a site to help me practice, please shoot me an email.  Please no bigger than a $5 buy-in though.

December 28th

Sorry I have been so quiet here over the past few days.  I have been out of town with family and enjoying the holidays.  The traffic is still flowing pretty heavy into the site.  I do have doubts though that I will be able to meet the 2 million unique visitors unless some of you reading this can help me out by posting more about this in forums or even better if you own a website, do a news story about it.

I am staying positive though as I have plenty of time to go before the match.  Right now however the traffic has tapered down to around 10,000 visitors a day.  This is a little less than the average of 13,000 I need to get.  As I said however though I have plenty of time left.  I have been playing a lot of online poker lately though and I have been doing fairly well.  Last night I watched Danial Negraneau play some guy named DreamClown at PokerRoom.com in a 500/1000 limit game.  Each were sitting with over $100K.  I think Danial ended up winning around $70K. It was absolutely the sickest thing I have ever seen.

Anyhow I am back in town so I will continue updating the site.  Thanks for all your continued support!

December 22nd

With Christmas getting close I am hoping that my family doesn't find out about the bet.  I really don't feel like answering questions about this bet with them.  Call it crazy but my wife is actually getting excited now about the possibility for us to be millionaires in 2006.  I have been practicing my online heads up play at a few different sites and will continue to play in $5 heads up matches.  I know that there has been a great deal of people chatting about this on the internet and in forums and blogs.  Some people think this is a scam, others think think I am just plain nuts.

The problem I see is that it is easy for anonymous people on the internet to say that they wouldn't take such a bet or that I am insane, or a hoaxer.  But in reality if presented with the same opportunity, most WOULD take the bet.  It's just a finger, it's not the end of the world.  I still haven't decided how to make more money off of the website.  I had to once again purchase more bandwidth as I was getting close to the limit yesterday.  My email box is also overflowing an quite honestly I don't respond to most emails unless there is a good reason to do so.

I also removed the hit counter as people were using auto-refreshers on it which is just stupid.

December 19th

It was a pretty long weekend.  I actually played poker at my relatives house on Saturday night.  We played Texas Hold'em until 2:00 in the morning.  I won a wopping $15!  When I told my in-laws about the bet I had made with well........we'll call him Mr.X, they thought I was crazy.  Although they know him also and know that h is just as crazy with his money.

I had to add an area on the homepage to manually input the number of unique visitors that have showed up at the website.  Apparently some jokers have been hitting the counter with a refresher of some sort and it is not accurately showing the real number of unique visitors.  My friend who is on the other side of this bet was a bit concerned about that when he asked me to the visitor logs.  Nonetheless I am getting a ridiculous amount of hits. I was a little bummed when I learned that I didn't have 500K hits, instead only around 100K.  I keep telling myself I have until April however to keep getting the word out.

My email box is literally overflowing from offers to sponsor my index finger to business propositions about what to do if I win the million.  Of course there is a fair amount of hate mail too, but to those folks you can have my middle finger.

I also want to make it clear that the links to PokerRoom.com are through their affiliate program.  Mr. X suggested doing this so that I can maybe make a few extra bucks in the meantime.  I didn't even know you could get paid for referring people to online poker rooms, so this is pretty cool.  I suppose we could do the match at a different poker website too.  I just chose Pokerroom.com because that's what my friend suggested and I play there myself once in a while.  Anyhow I'll probably be laying there quite a bit in the coming months to get ready for the match.

Thanks for all the support so far folks. Keep sending your friends to the site and posting about this in the different forums and message boards.

December 15th

Well this site keeps getting more hits and links to it every day, I just hope it doesn't slow down.  Last night it went offline for about 6 hours due to bandwidth limitations.  I had to spring more more money to a hosting company first thing this morning to get back online.  Anyhow I am being bombarded with emails.......I really should consider accepting advertising, but that's not what this site is about. I just want to win a million dollars and not lose my finger.

I actually got an email from a poker site wanting to sponsor my right index finger.  I am considering that but we'll see.  Although I haven't had time to respond to all the emails I enjoy reading them and all the kind words of support.  I am actually going to be doing a live online chat next week probably on Monday night.  I had a friend set me up a chat room that I will try to be in when I have time.

I also spoke with a plastic surgeon this morning regarding the procedure should I lose.......damn it's not cheap either and he said it might be quite painful.  He did agree however that he would do the surgery the week of April 18th if I lose.  With that said I am begging anyone reading this......PLEASE help me get the word out.  If you have a blog or news site and give me coverage I will post about it here or in the press section. Or if you just have ideas on how I can get more people here email me

People have also been asking me to post a picture of myself on the internet........I'll see if I can get that done next week.  People think I am some crazy lunatic.......I'm just a regular guy with a pipe dream to win a million dollars.

December 14th

Holy Cow, today was absolutely crazy.  I am beginning to think that reaching 2 million hits is not going to take anywhere near the amount of time I once thought it would.  I never realized how powerful the internet is and how many visitors can possibly show up at a website in one day.  Literally within on day I already have 100 different websites and blogs linking to this site.

When I look at some of the different postings and news stories it seems that some people think this is a hoax or that pokerroom.com is somehow behind this site.  Both are false assumptions.  Furthermore I have made the choice to gamble my finger in order to give my family the life we have always dreamed of.  If anything people should respect the fact that I am willing to take that type of risk. Even if I hit the 2 million mark I may up the stakes and ask for $3 million with a guarantee from me that I will cut the finger off if I lose.  The difference between $1 million and $3 million to my friend is not substantial and I usually am able to beat him at poker.  He is the most competitive people I have ever met, so he just might be up for it.  Besides he is pretty crazy and I know for a fact watching me lose a finger would be funny to him.

Now onto even more exciting news.  Today I had 39 emails from various websites wanting to advertise here at SaveMyFinger.com.  One bigger webmaster even said that this is on pace to become larger than www.milliondollarhomepage.com.  I am in shock literally by that statement.  Yesterday I decided not to have any sponsorship or advertisers but for the right price I would probably bring on one or two.  One guy even called me a dumb ass for not having a pixel ad thing set up in the left column.  Well excuse me sir, this isn't a pixel website.

It's crazy to think all I want to do is to make a million dollars and not lose my finger.  Now all of the sudden I am being contacted by news, media, and people wanting to pay me for a silly banner ad.  A buddy of mine actually bought me an ad on a pixel site today though at www.webwordofmouth.com/pixels/en/.  I am testing this out to see how much traffic I could generate by advertising on more of these pixel sites.

This is becoming a lot of fun......well much funner than sitting in the sweat shop all day running the same damn lathe every day.  Tomorrow I am going to tell my wife about this whole thing when I get home from work.  I'll post here how that goes.

Thank-you to everyone for keeping the word about this website circulating around the internet.  Even if some people have negative opinions, it is still attracting new visitors.  That's what I need.

December 13th

Wow, that's all I can say.  I would have never imagined that this site would explode like it has.  The amount of traffic and press I have gotten is ridiculous.  I actually got called by the Howard Stern show today and one of the other major radio station in California.  I'm not sure I can make either of these trips though with my work schedule.  The emails have been ridiculous too.

I have decided not to sell advertising on the site for now as the response was so huge.  I can probably make more just placing my own advertisements there.........not sure what to advertise yet.

Either way this is unbelievable for two days and I am still in shock.  I can only imaging that if these keeps up that I will be playing for a million dollars come April.  I suppose I better polish up on my poker game!

December 12th

So far I cannot believe the response to this website.  In under 24 hours I have already gotten over 6000 hits! I am starting to think that getting to 2 million hits might actually be possible.  I have also gotten a few emails from news stations requesting interviews.  I'll post the links as soon as they're up.  Everyone wants to know if I am really going to cut my finger off.  And the answer is YES.  I am a man of my word and if I do lose this bet, I will follow through just as I expect my friend to pay me if he loses.  The other question is why would someone risk $1 Million dollars like that...........if you saw my friends bank account, you would realize a million dollars isn't that much too him.  I'm still a little in disbelief that this is all happening.  We just made the bet on Saturday night.