Melted Felt
Melted Felt Basic Information
Melted Felt Overview
With their first post in 2008, Melted Felt began offering fake poker news in a Blog setting. Dubbed "The Other Side of Poker News," Melted Felt features an average of around 9 new posts each month spinning recent poker events and adding a humorous touch to many of the aspects of online poker play that players often criticize. From time to time, Melted Felt also includes a post on current events from around the world. Although all of the news on the web site is fake, the content gives the impression that the writer is an experienced online poker player and includes interesting anecdotes and information. On occasion, Melted Felt actually includes some factual information about site promotions and new poker tournaments but it can be difficult to separate it from the parody news.
Melted Felt Main Sections
As Melted Felt is set up like a normal Blog, there really is only a single major content section on the web site. However, there are side navigation bars that provide a poker topic survey, the most popular posts, factual sites with real online poker and casino information and a Blogroll. Towards the bottom of the sidebar, you can also access the Blog archive to view previous posts back to the first one in May of 2008. The main Blog on Melted Felt is a periodically updated roll including about 10 posts on each page, on average. Most readers of Melted Felt are dedicated and keep up with new pages on a regular basis.
Melted Felt Content
Melted Felt is almost entirely written as a humorous news source, similar to online parody periodicals like The Onion. Written with the online poker player in mind, the content on Melted Felt focuses on both current events and pokes fun at professionals and beginning poker players alike. One of the unique features of Melted Felt is that the content really is written cleverly enough that, in order to understand the jokes, a reader should have at least a basic understanding of the online poker atmosphere. There are swears within the content but they are used in a way that will not be distracting to most online poker players.
Many posts on Melted Felt are designed to be quick reads for poker players that need a break or are trying to pass some time while they wait to play their next hand. For example, two posts in June 2012 site the World Series of Poker as being, once again, dull and provide 101 ways to pass the time during online poker tournament breaks. In a May, 2012 post, Melted Felt describes a fictitious plan by Senator Kyl to use online poker players to plug the Deepwater oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. In other posts, Melted Felt makes fun of the slow qualifying tournament structure of some online poker sites and pokes fun at security measures at others - on one occasion citing that a particular poker site plans to buff up its security using the computer.
Each post on Melted Felt is very conversational and easy to read without delving too deeply into complex online poker topics. Some posts are far from scan able, however, and can be difficult to read at times - especially with lists that are formatted with dashes when they really should be bulleted or numbered.
Melted Felt Site Navigation
As Melted Felt is entirely a Blog, the navigation can be a bit tricky at times. If you are a regular reader and want to catch up on some current posts, the past few months are displayed on the same page - making the process easy. However, just like any other Blog, finding a specific post can be a bit challenging as there is no site feature and few posts include link backs to relevant posts. However, you can use the labels section at the bottom of each post to find other posts with the same labels but the majority of these labels lead to only a few other posts. Adding a related post section and simple search feature for each post would greatly improve the navigation of the web site.
Melted Felt is a Blog and is laid out exactly how you would expect such a Blog to be presented - so there are no surprises with the web site. Even new readers should be able to use the archive section to take a look at previous posts and do exactly what the site was intended for, waste a little time with some poker humor.
