If you’ve been following the tweets of Boris Becker over the past couple of days (@TheBorisBecker), you’ll notice a confusing and endearing habit of his to refer to himself in the third person. But because it’s Twitter, he does it in abbreviated form, meaning “BB”, as in “Into Level 14, average is 126, BB has 120“.
If you write about poker a lot, typically on a notepad standing by the side of a tournament table, you also tend to use a lot of abbreviations, one of which will also be BB (for big blind). It’s the same shorthand used on television graphics for poker shows, such as on EPT Live right now, where every eight hands, Boris Becker will be in the big blind. BB in the BB.
Imagine if Salvatore Bonavena was also at the table, one seat to Becker’s right. And what about if Doyle Brunson was a seat further around, with the dealer button? And Carl Olson next to him, in the cut off. That would give us BB in the BB, SB in the SB, DB with the DB and CO in the CO.
You can probably see where we’re going with this, but it’s not as easy as you might think. Does anyone know any poker players out there with the initials HJ for hijack (beyond Heinz Jaschkowitz, sixth placed finisher in a €100 side event at the German championships in Rozvadov)? And there’s a big prize for anyone who can come up with a UTG.
(We are desperate for our old friend Umberto Gorirossi to have the middle name Toni or Thiago or Tomasso or something like that. But we just don’t know.)
We would, of course, have Mickey Petersen and Mikalai Pobal in mid-position, but auditions are still open for any EPs and LPs out there, to fill the remaining seats. Also, the dealer’s chair was also not especially easy to fill, as that position tends to be referred to only as “D”. It meant we were looking for poker’s equivalent of Denilson or Deco, ie, a Brazilian or Portuguese who went only by one name.
The name recognition for Doyle Brunson is such that “Doyle” tends to do it. Much so, actually, for “Dario”, meaning Dario Minieri. But Doyle got the berth, largely because if we did want to add the B for “button”, Mr Brunson could help us out there.
As a supplement to the above, we have also noticed that there’s the magnificently named Dmitry Chop in today’s field. What other players are there whose names that are also poker terms? We have long wanted this gentleman to start playing poker: Mr Minh Cash.
So help us if you can by letting us know on Twitter (@pokerstarsblog) who else we could use to fill our fantasy table of abbreviated or appropriate poker names.
(Come on, it passed the time, didn’t it?)
Don’t forget the way to follow our main event coverage. There’s hand-by-hand stuff, including chip counts, in the panel at the top of the main EPT Berlin page. There will be feature pieces below that panel, including updates from the side events. EPT Live is now live. And everything to do with the European Poker Tour is on the European Poker Tour site.
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