Heads Up For Rolls?

A celebration is occurring somewhere on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan – dear Melted Felt readers. As the SEO efforts of a fine young gentleman by the name of Ahmed show some fantastic results.

Meanwhile, Joanne Tooth, owner of the much loved ‘The Family Bakery’ in the High Street of Stratford-Upon-Avon, England is trying to work out why the sudden influx of visitors to her website are not buying too many pastries…

Well, a disconnect of such epic proportions required the veritable tsunami known in the poker business as an investigation by none other than the Melted Felt Mole – who started to get Ahmed’s side of the story.

As an SEO consultant of 3 weeks experience, Ahmed is an old hand by the standards of the industry. He knows complicated buzzwords, acronyms, technical sounding descriptions and fills any gaps in conversation by repeating ‘high quality links, my friend, high quality’ over and over again.

When his fiverr gig promising number 1 rankings on Google was snapped up by Joanne, Ahmed immediately got to work on finding some valuable keywords for his client. Cup-Cakes was far too competitive, bread looked like a possibility, but the search volume was just not there. Then he came across a keyword that was not just beatable, it was a valuable one too – with Adsense indicating that people were paying a mind-boggling $1.34 for a click.

This triggered Ahmed to get to work, he would do everything in his power to get the Family Bakery to the number one spot for ‘Heads Up For Rolls’.

High quality link followed high quality link… Ahmed knew his stuff and would add valuable contributions to forum threads (for example joining in conversations in trainee chef’s forum on dough to explain that they needed a combination of flour, eggs and water). He then went into blog commenting overdrive, complimenting people on no less than 237 posts he had not read. By the end of the night Ahmed had to give back his brothers computer, and it was a painful 2 days before he would get back online to see the results.

Joy.

The Family Bakery was number one for 'Heads-Up For Rolls', and there was $4 waiting in his Paypal account from fiverr.

Not only was Ahmed now a veteran SEO consultant (his 3 weeks and 3 days putting him firmly in the 3rd quartile, (98% range)), he now had a reference to give out for other customers. The Mole did inquire as to whether Ahmed was worried about the next Penguin update, what with the fact that he basically spammed the bakery up the rankings? Of course, he reminded us that he only deals in high quality links (my friend), and that he was not sure about Penguins at all, in fact he would have to check to see if they are even allowed under sharia law…

Meanwhile, back in Stratford, Joanne has seen an definite increase in visitors to the 3 page website that a local wiz made for her for the bargain price of just $3000 (+ $500 per update)… the only thing is, contact form message after contact form message comes in… and not a single order for birthday cakes or even a French stick – she just can not work out how it is even possible for her rolls to be ‘retarded’.

MF

iPoker Network In 'Winning Players' Scandal

Shocking news from the iPoker Network, dear Melted Felt readers, as rumors circulated that winning players have somehow infiltrated this previously fish-filled network – and may even be playing while under the table.

Things started with an announcement that player-to-player transfers were banned. Some large affiliates were implicated in 2+2 threads, which were then deleted. Paranoia and rumors then ran wild, with nobody knowing who was responsible for getting decent poker players past the security software on this network. Things took another twist with a big affiliate locked out of iPoker and now things have gone from bad to worse – in an effort to identify the good players a ‘Know Your Customer’ requirement with a deadline of May 20th has been demanded by the network operators.

iPoker are determined to keep their pop-up infested poker client free from winning players, so as to enable the losing majority more opportunity to decimate their bankrolls with the brutally high rake.

The KYC drive should help identify those winning players. With tricky multiple choice questions like ‘Is Ace-Six a premium hand?’, ‘What is the fold button for?’ and ‘What is a withdrawal?’ requiring scanned documents that prove that people still ask for scanned documents. 

Once winners are positively identified they will need to take a photo of their playing setup from at least 3 different angles with a copy of today’s newspaper clearly visible in frame. This is to prove that the players are not in fact playing under the table – which rumors suggest has been an ongoing problem on this network for a number of years. Wear and tear on the carpet, and how ‘natural’ each player looks in their above-table playing position will be taken into account.

There have also been rumors that American players were able to access this network using modern technology including the internet. I was not able to verify this at the time of writing, though understand through psychic contact with an imaginary iPoker rep that potential winning players and people playing under their tables is considered a far bigger problem.

I’ll keep you posted as to when the winners have been kicked off and it is safe to go back to those iPoker tables.

MF

The Moment Geoff Realized It Was All An April Fool

April 1^st, the day that everyone is expecting spoof stories, so they lose that magic ingredient of being able to, erm, ‘fool’ people – making them not very funny at all, and the day a slightly sad reflection of the repetitive and uneventful nature of your life.

It was not always like this.

In fact, 3 years ago, Geoff Smith from Leeds in the UK had just discovered online poker, won a few bucks, joined a training site, got reasonably good, fallen in love with the game and decided to go pro.

Back in those heady days of 2010, the world had seemed wonderful. Geoff realized that he could be free of his boss, his sh1te little office job, he could earn far more and be the master of his own destiny by grinding online poker games.

He quit, started grinding in earnest. Geoff loved the game, his bankroll grew, he was kitted up in balla fashion, with dual screens, a big chair, a TV. Life was looking up.

3 years ago Geoff had his life mapped out, he was free.

Today, April 1^st 2013, Geoff realized he was the April fool.

He now hates poker – the decline in his hourly rate is matched by the ever bigger struggle to put in the hours.

His friends in that shitty little office have been promoted, or moved on to bigger and more interesting projects, and are now getting paid more money – and heading for interesting careers.

When not sitting in a darkened room clicking a mouse, Geoff spent so much time boring his friends with tales from the virtual felt that his only friends are similar anonymous wraiths from the online forums.

He is still amazed that the girls on online dating sites show no respect for his balla status and never quite get to the dating stage. He’d love to meet them in bars, but Friday night is prime grinding time, and besides – he has put on a bit too much weight since his grinding routine only involves moving from bed to desk and back again.

With a 3 year hole in his resume the only way back is via the bottom rung.

The beauty is that 1000’s just like Geoff are buying the idea of freedom right now – April fool guys, April fucking fool!

MF

All WSOP Entry Fees To Be Determined By Penis Length

Boyed by the positive media reaction to charging douchebag guys 10x more to join the ladies event in this year’s World Series of Poker. The organizers have extended the idea, and have now decided that all the events should have entry fees determined by penis length.

The core idea is that men with big wieners should pay less in the big events than those with cocktail sausages.

A voice inside my head claiming to speak for Hurrah’s explained. “we think it is simply wrong that gents with massive one-eyed trouser snakes should pay the same entry fee as players with …” (at this point our contact stuck out his little finger and pointedly wiggled it… pretty impressive for a head-voice, no?). He continued, “For the $10k championship events we are considering charging $1,500 for every inch less than 10, meaning a *cough*  larger gentleman could get into the game for free, while someone with a  4 inch stubby would end up paying nine grand”

Of course, there have already been murmerings on Twitter that the measurement system is ripe for being gamed. For example, some states measure the underside, starting between the balls, while other stricter states state that the measuring tape must be at the exact join between the penis base and the stomach. “some jokers thinking they have 10 inches actually measures from the part next to their asshole” our spokes-voice confided, “in reality they would be in serious danger from passing sparrows if ever exposed”

Phil Hellmuth, alleged owner of a real whopper of a cock, welcomed the news. He stroked his chin and overtly implied that the organizers would be paying him to sit in the games. At the time of writing we have received no response to our e-mail to Phil titled, ‘So Phil, Exactly how big is your purple-headed womb ferret?’ (sigh)

Online satellite qualifiers have been thrown into confusion by this announcement, with their flat-fee system not designed to cope with the new todger-based fee system”.

PokerStars are apparently worried that guaranteeing seats in the Main Event in a satellite marked ‘Qualifier for guys with penis length between 2 and 4 inches’ would somehow not gain much traction. While changing the entry based on self reported lengths could be open to manipulation. We suggested that Ray Bitar was currently out of work, and could be usefully employed to fly to Vegas and gently cup the balls of all qualifiers before the event started – again for some strange reason nobody replied to our mails.

“What about the women!” I hear you ask.

Well, for the ‘pro grinders’ out there who have yet to experience it for themselves, Women do not have penises (shocking, I know, have coffee guys, insult someone on the 2+2 forum to make yourself feel superior, then come back to this post later).

Breast size was of course considered, though this discriminates against those who choose not to eat like hippos every day… We put the question to our head-voice spokesman who shrugged saying, “you mean outside of the ladies event? Meh, does not matter really, they can just chuck us a couple of bucks, they never win anything anyway.”

MF

Exclusive Tournaments For Guys Pretending To Be Women Now Worldwide

Spotty, greasy-haired young guys who most probably live with their mothers can now join special ‘pretending to be women’ tournaments – on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yes, dearest Melted Felt readers, these games are segregated from regular players and include special leaderboards – and can be found at poker mega-corp PokerStars as well as US-friendly Carbon Poker. What is more, Stars have started their very own pretending to be women club, which features qualifiers to freerolls which are going to be full to the brim with woman-mimicking saddos.

To avoid having to give these poker tournaments a name which is too long, the ‘Pretending to be a woman at the poker tables for who fucking knows what reason, you sad little fuck’ games have had their name shortened to the far more catchy ‘Women’s Tournaments’.

There are of course lots of benefits to playing a game with lots of other players from around the world who are also pretending to be women.

These include showing all the other girls in the room that you are the prettiest of them all, courtesy of your super-model avatar. Of course all the really fucking smart guys (erm, I mean girls) know that having a photo prefect 10/10 model photo is actually very profitable, since everyone believes that is what you really looks like and so underestimates your mathematical skills – enabling you to giggle a little when you make that super-thin value bet… safe in the knowledge that a dog avatar would probably not have got you paid off.

Where were we, ah yes, the ‘Women’s Tournaments’.

It sometimes gets tricky maintaining the feminine image while playing in these games. So the guys who are not quite smart enough to realize that everyone knows exactly what they are doing have developed an utterly transparent syntax for the chat box to bolster their failed image.

This includes typing ‘Biachhh’ instead of Retard when losing a 60/40, and swapping make-up tips googled from teenage magazines, and adding 'hmmm, what a delicious diet milkshake I just had to replace one meal, that should keep my butt trim' immediately following synchronized breaks.

Of course this does break down sometimes, it can be hard not to go off on one after the horror of losing a 70/30 and an 80/20 can lead to the most masculine of outbursts from even the most careful of guys.

Real Women The Victims

Of course, for every 1000 saddo guys there is a naïve lady who thinks that Women’s tournaments sound like a great idea and joins the games.

Confused that all the other girls have perfect skin, and names like DeathGrip1993, she may regret uploading that picture of her decidedly ugly baby. Of course, there are some very simple ways to check whether you are playing against a real woman or not:

-1 Backwards Play: This trait is almost universal, look out for huge bets and bluffs when weak and slowplays all the way to the river with the stone cold nuts. This is so prevalent that PokerStars should continue switching their buttons around just to get some money into the damn pots.

-2 The Loooong Pause Followed By All-In: This river move is either a lady or a Russian, everyone else stopped doing it in 2003.

-3 Sitting out for ages at the end of a 5 minute break: Yeah, well, your wife ever told you she will be ready in 5 minutes?

That’s almost that for this exciting installment of Melted Felt, just one more thing before I go. The sexism angle (that’s bias against one gender or the other to you spotty young boys getting excited at the use of the s-word). If there are women-only tournaments – why not Men’s?

MF

Lock Poker Add 13 New Pros

They say, dear Melted Felt readers, a poker pro in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. Lock Poker, the awesome US friendly poker site who have never heard of the word ‘withdrawal’, strongly agree. In fact they have been shaking bushes left, right and center and immediately signing up anything that fell out – as long as they could plausibly claim they were a poker pro.

In 2013 their list of poker pros (which already includes such massive household names as Casey Jarzabek and, erm, Justin Cook?) is set for a bigggg boost… with the inclusion of 13 of the sharpest poker minds this side of the Lonely Mountain.

Yes, I am pleased to exclusively announce right here at Melted Felt the signing of none other than Oin, Gloin, Thorin, Balin, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Fili, Kili, Dori, Nori, and Ori – worthy additions to the list of Lock Poker pros.

Making up for their small stature with fucking massive aggression, the new pros have taken a vow not to run too many opponents through with a sword after a bad beat. They are expected to bring their big Hobbit following along too, though Lock are stressing that their security is robust enough to prevent any magic rings forming part of a new super user scandal.

PokerStars Fight Back

The rumor mill is already whirling that PokerStars are not going to take this one lying down. 

With the newly acquired Full Tilt currently only having a couple of big names, and Negreanu expected to last far longer than his remaining hair at their flagship site – Stars have gone ahead with a big little signing of their own. Taking on Bashful, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy and Doc. 

Snow White herself was originally going to be part of the deal, until pics emerged of her double teaming Mike Matusow and Phil Helmuth, putting the negotiators right off of their breakfast.

Party Fight Even Backer

Yes, Tony G will have some fine company with the timely announcement that the Sackville-Bagginses are to join the list of Party Pros.

Titan Fight Even Backerer

The leading site on the iPoker Network are no strangers to losing their second tier poker pros, erm, no, I mean – leading the way with awesome poker promotions, or something. After lengthy negotiations with Jimmy Kranky and Dr Evil's mini-me fell through Titan were at a loss with which dwarf to sign.... After ruling out the cast of ‘Time Bandits’and, *ahem* accidentally murdering Pobby from Harry Potter in a terrible anal blunt knife trauma incident - many hands were wrung, several nerves frayed and just about all possible nails chewed…. Alas the story ended well, with Tom Cruise set to join Titan soon.

 Lets hope at least one of you has actually seen Time Bandits...

MF

Poker Player Of The Year 2013

It may only be the 2nd of January, but (dear Melted Felt readers) the Poker Player of the year 2013 has already been decided...

I was playing drunk PLO Zoom poker the other night (strange, I always win at Zoom when pissed, only some computer bug or other means my bankroll is lower the next morning) and came across this avatar.

This came from a screenshot of the table, I have not changed or doctored it myself. Yes RaKo777 - you are the Melted Felt Poker Player of the Year 2013!

(pic removed, sorry!)

Unfortunately I was do distracted checking whether this was the 'real thing' that I mis-played my flopped set of 6's... though as a bonus, after calling in my other half to verify, I did learn that Hungarians have a single word for 'a decorated vagina'... vaginull or something like that.

Anyway, its 2013, and I decided to get back to updating Melted Felt again - so spread the word, come back soon and... erm, well, thats it really.

RaKo777 I bow down before you!

MF

New Poker Tracking System Unveils The Assholes At Your Table

While poker players intuitively know that they are playing against a bunch of assholes, statistical proof was – until now – hard to come by. All this has changed today, dear Melted Felt readers, with the unveiling of a new tracking system called Poker Asshole Ratings (PAR for short).

This software creates an overlay statistics display for online poker games, breaking down the characteristics of your opponents and enabling you to instantly identify the complete assholes at your table from the, erm, normal assholes.

All the major sites have approved this tool for use, and with a configurable display you will be able to optimize for the habits which drive you nuts.

Here is a selection of the criteria which PAR will highlight, including some made up acronyms, which should help to make you dull grinders feel superior to those who have not learned what they mean, huh?

The standard asshole rating will look like this 4 / 43% / 0.7 / Y / 4.5 and is comprised of the following information:

- VPITY (Voluntarily Put In ‘Thankyou’). This is a cumulative score of THE biggest asshole behavior of them all – the unsolicited thank you. Each time a player types TY into the chat box without anyone complimenting their hand our sophisticaled AA (asshole algorithm) will add a point to their score, doubling it after a suck out. All German players start with a max score of 10 (reduced after 10k hands as required), since everyone knows they will display this gutter-life behavior at every single f-ing opportunity – and probably have no idea how sad it makes them look.

- Cunt Time (CT%): This stat is displayed as a percentage, since we can never be completely sure that this asshole behavior is occurring on any single occasion, but can be sure enough over many hands. Cunt-time happens when a player raises, sees a 3 bet, a 4-bet and possibly even a cold call of that 4-bet – and still feels the need to go into his time-bank for a period of chin-stroking before folding. Since we know that the % of hands which are genuine tough decisions in this spot is tiny, the vast majority of the time the player is simply being an annoying little cunt by keeping everyone else waiting… repeat performers get a high CT% - we know who you are…

- Whining About Bad Beats: WABB score is on a log scale, with certain types of whining orders of magnitude worse than others. Every point on our scale doubles the asshole-factor, with complaining about bad cards at the bottom and complaining when an opponent made a call you absolutely wanted them to make and hitting their hand closer to the top end – whining incessantly when losing a 40% / 60% gets the top WABB score, and a tissue.

- Rigtard Total: This is for those players who believe that the weight of their $5 bet affected the weekend football scores, that their choices of activity affect the weather for millions of others, and that the poker games use sophisticated software to prevent them (and only them) from winning. The Higher RT scores are given to players who bet big when bluffing, slowplay horribly with aces and still cant figure out that the reason they lose is that they are actually shit at poker. Extra points are awarded to those sad fuckers who hang about whining in the chat box after they have busted, euuuch.

- General Twat Score: This is a single figure which sums up the overall asshole-factor of any player – allowing for quick comparisons. Additional factors, including uploading an avatar of a top model (I just know that many of these players think that others actually believe these to be them) or football mascots (especially for other countries). Creating names such as FEAR-AVENGER-X gets a couple more points (you twats!) and anyone showing just how much they know about poker strategy with names like 5betfold or ICMking get max extra points for putting their ego above profits.

We look forward to collecting as much information as possible, and will be creating a leaderboard of the top assholes by poker site for publication in the new year. Come on, you know I’m talking about you, yes, you – asshole.

MF

Quick Fire Tuesday Poker News Roundup

What do you mean lack of posts? I’m posting once a month whether I feel like it or not.

Anyway, it’s Tuesday and time for an extensive roundup of the latest poker news. This week we have a drunk judge in the US, the iPoker Network creating fish-only tables and the fact that you are not going to win any events in the WCOOP, you loser.

Skill? Who You Kidding!

Federal Judge Jack Weinstein shocked the poker world last week by ruling that poker is a game of skill. Weinstein, who obviously has not been playing in any of the same games I have, said  that skill ‘predominates’. At the same time he ruled that the moon was made of green cheese, the dinosaurs went extinct in a giant game of reptilian Russian-roulette and that the price of houses could only ever go up.

At the same time Jon Pappas of the Poker Players Alliance has the audacity to use the ensuing press as to claim some kind of victory… Which reminds me, I had the idea of doing a post including a mailable refund form for donations given to that bunch of worthless clowns…

iPoker Network Going Fish Only

With the split of the iPoker network happening on the 1st September, players on this network will have to sign a disclaimer form clearly stating that they are Shit at Poker before being allowed to play.

Over the past couple of months, the individual sites have been closely monitored, and those network members with good players are being told to fvck right off… Leaving only the really dumb fish and pathetic loose-passive losers to play on the new ‘iPoker2’ tables.

My understanding is that the new marketing campaign for the fishy part of the network will be:

‘iPoker, Where Retards Donate Rake By Swapping Suckouts’ ™

So, you wanna play there?

Pokerstars WCOOP

Yep, the World Championship of shattered dreams is here again, where other people will win HUGE amounts of money in the feature poker tournaments while you min-cash a couple of them.

I know, I know, it’s very exciting at the moment, with satellites running and a nice chunk of your bankroll set aside to ‘take a shot’. Lets face it together though, eh? You know you are a fvcking loser, and I know you’re a fvcking loser… you are going to have a good start in one or two events, suffer a bad beat, fail to make moves at the right time, play your hand to obviously and get stolen from, then you’ll be down to 8 big blinds, have to shove, get called by a hand that is only 42% to win against you… and *boom* he’ll get there on the river.

Just get a job, some people are cut out for the glamour of being a poker pro… you, no, your just going to lose your bankroll.

Oh, and best of luck to everyone else!


MF

Damn, forgot I was supposed to post this tomorrow.