Amidst all the excitement of the WCOOP Main Event yesterday, I also final tabled the $250 monthly tournament on Cake Poker. I wish I could say there were interesting hands, but honestly the structure is so bad that pretty much every pot I played consisted of me either min-raise-folding, min-raise-calling, or shoving over someone else’s raise.
It was a funny contrast to the crazy deep WCOOP structure, and there was a similar contrast in the quality of the players. Also at the final table were AJKHoosier and a guy who was clearly a 2+2 reader. I think it’s pretty dumb to give yourself a name like “facepalm.jpg”. I hardly ever play on Cake, so I never have a read on anyone when I’m new to a table. Just seeing a screenname like that gives me a ton of information about what this guy knows and how he’s likely to play.
Anyway, I finished 6th for $7500. That was almost exactly enough to cover the day’s tournament buy-ins and some slight losses in the cash games I was playing on the side. In fact, after 8 hours, I finished the day down $20 and change. LOLSundays.
“Just seeing a screenname like that gives me a ton of information about what this guy knows and how he’s likely to play.”
Facault I would to love you to write article about the significance of online poker screennames.LOL.
Similar to you I spotted some correlation between screenname and their results.
For fun and curiosity I made several sql queries against my database.
Most players were SNG mid-stakes players and records were acquired from sharkscope.
Most of the scrennames I broke down into a few categories.
This is what I found.
1.On average wining players have shorter nicknames than losers.
2.On average nicknames with drugs (marijuana) references are losing players.
3.On average nicknames with alcohol references are winning players(beer,vodkapeole,etc).
4.On average nicknames with sexual references are break even players.
5.On average nicknames with poker references are winnig players(coolriver,etc).
Honestly I am not able to classify “facepalm.jpg” to any category (location, year, Rounders’characters, poker pros).
There are huge category folks who can’t come up with an original name.
“Facepalm.jpg” did great job.LOL.
Cool idea and very interesting results. Since you mention drug references, there was also a “COCAINE_LOL” who went deep in the tournament. The LOL part is a dead giveaway that he’s a poker forum guy. The “Facepalm.jpg” is the same; it’s a reference to a popular image posted in threads where someone has said something ridiculous.
I think you can make useful inferences from some screen names. I would assume, for example, that someone named “foucault” is way smarter than your average 2+2tard and will put a lot of thought into his play. Andrew gets away with it because most people have no frackin’ clue who Foucault was and are not sufficiently curious to google it.
facepalm.jpg probably gets away with it, too. I confess to not knowing what it meant and it’s not like I don’t spend a lot of time surfing the web that I should be investing in something more productive.
Yeah, my screenname isn’t ideal, either. I think though that it doesn’t give away as much specific info about how I will play. There are plenty of smart/intellectual people who suck at poker and plenty who think about their play but still haven’t been exposed to certain basic concepts or “standard” plays.
A friend and I had a discussion about screennames and I think the most donk name you could pick is a profession + a year before 1975
doctor1968
lawyer1953
bigbluffer1976
are just about as donk as they get.
although nascar_1949 would be an exception 😛
Yeah Nascar’s name actually tricked me into playing him for a bit 🙁
On a serious note now…
Nicknames can often reflect fundamental goals and values when your opponent sit down to play poker.
“foucault” belongs to this category.
Most opponents subconsciously goal is “I JUST want to win.” or “I JUST want to crush you.”
Foucault is to much about deep thinking and self improvement -I do not like it I prefer opponents with “garbage” goals.