What's In a Name?

I've had a few different names on a few different poker sites and over the course of the past three years I've played against certainly thousands and probably tens of thousands of different players. Some people have names like AApoker, Igotthenutz, or treysfull21, others have names like BigJohn32 or StudSteve and still others have names that are as far as I can tell total nonsense such as Earyda342. But, in the mix of all of those names a few people come up with clever or at least interesting monikers.

My name ACESEDAI is no doubt confusing to most people. What it's supposed to be is Ace Sedai and it's a poker related spin on Aes Sedai, who are the most powerful characters in the series of books The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordon. I think the people who get it think it's clever. But I can tell from the chat box that most people think it's supposed to be Aces edai whatever the hell that would be. I know someone thought it was supposed to be pronounced like aces die and I'm sure others have thought my name was Ed and I was trying to say aces, Ed, artifical inteligence.

I wish I'd made a note of all of the best names that I've seen, but there are only a few that have stuck with me. Maybe my favorite one is Sarahbellum. When I saw that one I thought to myself anyone making clever references to a specific part of the brain is probably not an idiot. Two funny ones I remember are NuclearFart and Upay4myweed.

The main inspiration for this post though was the following name

>///' > ooO.
At first I looked at it and thought "What the hell kind of name is that?" But upon closer inspection I saw that it's actually a fish blowing 3 bubbles (I can almost hear a chorus of "Ohhhhhhhh yeeaaaaahs" in the distance). Although, it's no doubt a pain in the ass to enter a username that requires heavy use of the shift key, I thought it was a neat username.

In other news April is off to a good start. Happily I've turned things around in the $1/$2 games and while I've been unable to continue the furious pace in the $2/$4 games, I'm still thrilled with how it's going so far. After 4 days I've played 5,117 hands of $1/$2 and won $1,196 (23.3 cents per hand) and I've played 4,607 hands of $2/$4 and won $849 (18.4 cents per hand). So far I'm right on track in terms of making it to 60,000 hands and making it to over $10,000 for the month.

Jen and I are both taking today off to go visit our accountant and do our taxes for 2006. AWESOME! Happily I've made some quarterly payments to the IRS and all of those massive WSOP losses are tax deductible so the damage shouldn't be too bad. But, since all I can do is guess about how much I owe it's still a little (or a lot) stressful.

I'll also be taking tomorrow off since I need a little break. I've played at least some poker for 17 straight days (12 wins and 5 losses) and I've got 7 straight full work days on my calender starting Saturday if I'm going make it to 30,000 hands before I leave for Vegas on the 15th.