I’ve been having fun lately with trying to find hidden tells in the screen names of my online opponents. While it’s impossible to make hard-and-fast rules about names, there does seem to be some pseud0-trends I’ve spotted:
All Caps. If a player has his name written completely in capital letters, he’s more than likely to be a loose aggressive player. Names like "BILLYTHEKID," "HKLILY," and "COLDRIVER85" are guys likely to have higher than average VPIPs, preflop raise %'s, and sky-high aggression ratings. There doesn’t seem to be an inverse corollary to this rule, however, as I’ve seen just as many loose aggressive guys as I have tight passives with names in all lower case.
Fishy. If someone has a name that includes the word “fish” in it, beware; they might just be pretty good, tricky players. Seems like a number of guys try to appear to be poor players with names like “ImALosingFish” or “TimmyTheTrout” or even “ISuckAtThisGame.” In general, I'm wary of these guys; they’ll trap you while acting like bait themselves.
Sharky. Conversely, if someone has a name that includes “shark” in it, they often don’t seem to be very good. It’s almost like they’re trying to make up for inadequacies by instilling fear in their opponents with excess bravado-laden names. It kinda reminds me of the rule my wife applies to people she meets for the first time. If the person is overtly confident, they’re probably not that intelligent. This seems to hold true at the tables, too. “ImAShark,” “Predator,” “KillerPokerPlayer,” “ShipMeTheMoney,” etc. are all signs of overconfidence and, hence, less than perfect play.
Year of Birth/Graduation. Usually if someone has two digits after their name, it’s the year they were born. Sometimes it’s the year they graduated high school or college, too. It seems like the younger someone is, the more aggressive they tend to be at the table. I find I can disrespect their raises more often than not, though I remind myself I better hold a real hand ‘cuz they’re gonna play back at me. Older people tend to be more conservative, too. That doesn’t mean the gray hairs are any worse than younger players; in fact, they often are trickier players to go up against. I seem to have a harder time reading the old guys than the young’uns.
Female Names. I’m starting to think that half of the names like “MikesMom,” "SuzieQ69" and “GirlsRule22” are actually guys posing as girls. I think they believe they’ll get less respect and can pushed around more easily than someone named “BuffBob” or "MachoJuan." In other words, they’re trappers by nature. Beware of any female name; chances are they’re hoping you attack them while they hold the nuts.
Again, these are FAR from hard and fast rules, but I do tend to see some benefit in stereotyping a player based on his name, especially early in a game when I have nothing else to go on. Poker is a game of incomplete information. This is particularly true when you start a new game and don't recognize anyone else at the table. The guru has said many times to me that whenever he sits down at a game, he immediately starts putting people into different mental categories (Rock, Fox, Calling Station, LAG, etc.). As the game proceeds, he adjusts these reads accordingly, but he also claims that within ten minutes he has a pretty good handle on the opp and how they play. The book Blink talks about this whole phenomena of how your initial gut instinct about something is more often right than wrong. Maybe the same is true with screen names, too? More food for thought...
All-in for now…
-Bug
No comments:
Post a Comment