The Importance Of Poker Nicknames, Screen Names, & Avatars

All the poker playing greats have incredibly cool nicknames. (Except for the ones that don’t like Phil Ivey and Chip Reese.) It’s hard to come across another sport where so many of its players are donned with such unique handles. Have a bit of fun with a few monikers of some of the top players in the game who are playing in the PCA:

*Chris “Money800″ Moneymaker

*Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu

*Noah “Exclusive” Beoken

*Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier

*Greg “Fossilman” Raymer

There seems to be two camps when it comes to poker playing nicknames: old school versus the new Internet breed of kids whose first poker playing experiences were conceived online.

According to Stephane Lecocq, an amiable French poker player, who runs the website Mastergrinders, the main difference poker nicknames: “A lot of players come from online and only exists to other players as an avatar. Online poker players are very careful about picking the correct name and avatar because it will follow them all through their career.”

The selection of the proper screen name and avatar in online poker has taken a nod from such MMORPG games as World of Warcraft, where the users gets to create their own identity of hero or villain, which is how they will live and breath as players on such sites as PokerStars and Full Tilt. In the online world, the nicknames are more the vein of:

*3moany

*4KingAceHole

*55Lucky55.

On the hand, the older poker playing generation of poker players often have their nicknames chosen for them.”It usually comes from the journalist or the railbirds (fans who lean on the rails at poker tournaments) due to their behavior at a table or a success story,” Lecocq explains. For example, Dan “Action Dan” Harrington’s nickname is very ironic. The author of such poker books as Cash Games, plays a very tight, aggressive, and tactical style of poker. His m.o. is to usually play very few hands. Thus, when you watch Harrington at the table he is far from being “Action Dan”. Daniel Negreanu got his nickname “Kid Poker” from his days back in Toronto when he started playing poker at 17 and became a pro by the time he was 18. As a poker-playing young protégé the other players at the table would be jealous because Daniel’s mom would pack him sandwiches to eat between hands. And you only need to glance at Chris “Jesus” Ferguson to know why he is called as such.

Though the live tournament players are celebrated through their handle, in the online world, avatars and nicknames can provide anonymity. Why give away more information about yourself than is necessary?

Recently, the moniker “Isildur1” has been popping up on a lot of high stakes tables. “No one knows who he is,” Lecocq relays. “Right now he is one of the best players in the world. Everyone is trying to find out who he is.” The hunch is that Isildur1 is a Swedish player who doesn’t want to give away his identity because otherwise he’ll have to pay taxes on his winnings. Ah, the sorrows of being a winning poker player.

The online avatar can also be used to throw off other players. For example the use of a baby avatar in poker denotes that the player must be a real novice. An online pro might take on a baby avatar to throw off the other players in order to make them think they are playing with a real rube, thus allowing them to be incognito-especially when they are playing multi-tables. Lecocq concludes about poker avatars and screen names: ”It’s part of the ego and its part of the strategy!”

I think if I had a poker name it would be Harmon “Harmoney” Leon. What would be your poker name? We want to know!