When we interview members of the online poker community for feature articles, one of the questions we usually ask is, "How did you get your online poker screen name?" Is it a nickname your friends call you? Or is there something more behind it? We dug up a Poker Community thread from late last year in order to take a look at how some names you know and love in the online poker community came to be. At the end of the article, we want you to share your story with us.Players like Faraz The-Toilet Jaka have told us that they never thought they'd hit it big in the online poker world. Therefore, they selected what could be perceived to be a sub-optimal user name. The original poster in the Poker Community thread, Vancouver's Steve Murkle, reflected, "I just realized how this name will forever be referenced in the poker world and has become a huge part of me." Therefore, it's important to choose your poker name wisely.
Indiana's Chet Steadman was one of the first people to weigh in, telling the PocketFives community that his screen name comes from Gary Busey's character in the movie "Rookie of the Year." His moniker on PokerStars, OkldAssassns, comes from the name of a paintball team in Oakland.
Also relaying the source of his poker name was boneralert. We were definitely interested to hear how the Texan came up with it: "I made it on FTP five years ago because I couldn't think of anything I really liked and I was immature enough to be amused by it at the time. I think it's kind of silly now, but for the sake of consistency, I just made it my name on other poker sites after that."
Halifax's PeaceGotAces shared how his poker name came to pass: "PeaceGotAces came from when I was watching 'Ice T's Rap School' from like five or six years ago when it was on VH1. It came from one of the kid's lyrics that I found really dumb and funny." The Canadian is on the verge of topping $100,000 in tracked online poker cashes.
Speaking of a $100,000 cash badge, iamthedeck ftw, who has one and hails from Windsor, told his peers, "I probably took about two minutes total to think of mine. Some buddies and I at the time used to say, 'Can't beat the deck' every time we lost a hand at showdown no matter how light it was." To the east of Windsor, Philadelphia's ShyGuy03533 corrected a common misconception about his name: "It sounds like I'm a child pedophile, but I really just like Shy Guy from Mario (pictured)."Inanimate objects also inspired a few online poker names. Falling into this category is Portland, Maine's DawnSoap, who bluntly declared, "Was thinking of a name, glanced at the kitchen sink. The rest is history." Georgia's 8888kush found inspiration from a pair of top-notch poker hands: "I had made quad eights twice in the short time I had been playing small live games with friends before I started online and, well, I like the Kush."
Plenty of PocketFives members have pets and, not surprisingly, a few felines and canines popped up in the thread as well. Take PocketFives member Arty_the_Cat, for example, who wrote that she has a cat named Artticus. Additionally, her user name on the now-defunct Full Tilt Poker, Bentleythadog, comes from her pet bulldog, Bentley.
Another American, Nothingmaker, said his user name was a knockoff of 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker, the man who started it all: "I'm not good at anything and I created it during the Moneymaker boom, so it seemed apropos, although I became respectable at poker, ironically." Nothingmaker is approaching his five-year anniversary of being a member of PocketFives, having signed up in April 2007.
How did you get your online poker name? Leave a comment here or post in this thread.
