What's In A Name ?

Now, I could pretend that I read this in the Guardian. Truth be told though, I was lurking around the Hendon Mob website when I came across Vicky C's search for a nickname. As soon as I saw that I thought "no way is that going to work". And a quick skim of the relevant forum thread backs me up here. You definitely cannot choose your own nickname, as Vicky acknowledges straight off, but going about soliciting one is only one step above.

Basically, a real nickname is a name that you would use when talking to the person himself. I say himself because, as a rare sensible poster pointed out, girls really don't have poker nicknames (although see later). There are very few of those in poker. Devilfish is an example of one, I'm really struggling to think of any others. The second class of nickname would be one that you use when talking about the person. There are a few more of these. You might say "Bad Beat got the lot in the cash game with J5 suited" or "The Camel blew off a massive chip lead".

The third class of nickname is the most common one, used only by Vince, Jesse and others of that ilk. It's a fairly desperate attempt (on the part of all concerned) to turn a bunch of one-dimensional degenerate gamblers into "personalities" or (even worse) "characters". Incredibly though, it is possible to stoop even lower. Sometimes the player concerned is solely to blame for playing along with some horribly contrived nickname that no one would ever say without causing any nearby sarcasm detector to explode in a puff of smoke. "The Wise Owl" for example, or "The Ambassador", which has, incredibly, been laid claim to by at least three players to my knowledge.

On occasion though the player in question cannot be held to account because, quite frankly, who would. And so I give you the very worst nickname in poker, used only by Harry D and the like, it's "Golden Ovaries". What the has Lucy Rokach ever done to deserve that ? Look how far away from the first type of nickname that is. Could you ever imagine going up to Lucy and saying "Hi Golden Ovaries, how's it going ?". Or shouting across the room "Golden Ovaries ! You getting the lot again ?". You can try this if you like but make sure I'm at least 50 miles away, well out of the blast radius.

Finally though, there are encouraging signs that all this bollocks might soon come to an end, in the US at least. This is weird though, I can't find the link. There was a story on www.pokernews.com this morning saying that Binions were canning their televised "Ultimate Poker Challenge" series. Further to that, upcoming filming sessions for both Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker had been "rescheduled". The suggestion was that in the wake of UIGEA, advertisers were pulling out L R & C. However, as I say, the story now seems to have disappeared. None of this would hurt anyone who makes their money at the table in my opinion ; however, those who "maximise return from promoting a brand or image" (that is flog lots of tat with their name on it) might have that particular revenue stream cut off. Then we might see who can actually play.