The name game

One part of the job I'm doing for the World Series of Poker involves spending way more time than I would really like looking at the names of the players who have registered for the various tournaments.

Probably the lowest, most primitive, juvenile, abject form of humor is to make fun of people for their names. After all, with rare exceptions, nobody chooses his or her own name. Besides, those with names that make easy targets for ridicule have already had to endure a lifetime of idiots thinking they are clever by making the same tired jokes over and over again.

TOO BAD! I'm going to do it anyway. I think it's impossible to spend as much time looking at long lists of names as I have over the first three weeks of the WSOP without developing a list of things that strike one as amusing.

So first the disclaimers. As far as I know, every person mentioned herein is a fine, upstanding individual, probably an excellent poker player, and didn't do a single thing to me that would justify me making fun of them. Furthermore, I understand that what one finds funny is highly subjective, and varies from country to country and culture to culture.

TOO BAD! This is my list, and I get to pick what I find amusing!


Hardest to spell correctly; even their own mothers might get them wrong

Daniel Alaei
Pawel Andrzejewski
Remy Biechel
Erik Haakenson
Aditya Agarwal
Bret Atiyeh
Sirous Baghchehsaraie
Michael Chrysanthopoulos
John Strzemp
Steve Sarrafzadeh
Enkhjargal Ochirbat
Shavarsh Pirijanian


Cool

This batch is the exception. I'm not making fun of them. On the contrary, I find something unusually cool about these names.

Jac Arama
Kia Hooshmand
Champie Douglas
Vassilios Lazarou
Jose Paz


Just plain weird

Yeah, yeah, these names are probably not too out of place in whatever God-forsaken land they come from, but here they stand out as, uh, excuse me, what did you say your name was again?

Hani Awad
Praz Bansi
Gebon Barnoski
Wolbert Bartlema
Arash Beral
Remy Biechel
Sasa Biorac
Rami Boukai
Badih Bounahra
Asger Boye
Hamed Cholagh
David Daneshgar
Trai Dang
Quinn Do
Osmin Dardon
Lyric Duveyoung
Sherkhan Farnood
Yuebin Guo
Kazuki Ikeuchi
Faraz Jaka
Cort Kibler-Melby
Thang Luu
Ayaz Mahmood
Mihai Manole
Ugur Marangoz
Davood Mehrmand
Ketul Nathwani
Birinder Nijran
Alioscia Oliva
Shankar Pillai
Vivek Rajkumar
Sven Schmithuysen
Mojtaba Seyedin
Nadim Shabou
Soheil Shamseddin
Sigi Stockinger
Rodeen Talebi
Rajesh Vohra
Yueqi Zhu


Yeah, I find poker tedious, too

James Bord


Jed's brother?

Chris Clampitt


Think he pees like a race horse?

Jose Barbero


Can I get you a drink, sir?

Robert Beveridge


Say, can you fix my transistor radio while you're over here?

Motoyuki Mabuchi


He probably hits a lot of miracle cards on the river

Morgan Machina
(It's a joke about deus ex.... Oh, never mind.)


I thought they pulled him off of the market

Chris Viox


Wicked Chops Poker would make fun of them, but I never would

Woody Deck
Mark Dickstein
Darrell Dicken
Zelong Dong
Tam Hang
Emmanuel Sebag


These guys run a men's clothing store, right?

Eric Brooks
Joseph Brooks
Zach Brooks


De plane, boss, de plane!

Pete de Best
Greg Debora
Martel De La Chesnaye
Mike DeMichele
Ivan Demidov
Mark DeSerrano
Michael Deveronica
Jason DeWitt
Roland de Wolfe


They howl at the moon if the tournament runs too late

Roland de Wolfe
Paul Wolfe
Stephen Wolff
Dustin Woolf


The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

Aleksandr Bolotin
Ivan Demidov
Nikolay Evdakov
Kirill Gerasimov
Svetlana Gromenkova
Eugene Katchalov
Christopher Kolesnikoff
Alexander Kostritsyn
Alex Kravchenko
Anatoly Shilyuk
Anton Smolyanskiy
Leonid Vernik
Leonid Yanovski
Andrey Zaichenko


But where's Uncle Fester?

Dan Adams
George Adams
Tyler Adams


Names that, for some reason, strike me as properly belonging to porn stars

Dustin Dirksen
Dane Lomas
Steve Pestal
Ram Vaswani


At risk for getting each other's mail by accident

Nathan Doudney
Jimmy Dowda

Alan Jaffray
Allyn Jaffrey Shulman

Jamie Pickering
Janice Pickering

David Podgurski
Chris Podlewski

Jimmy Schultz
Jimmy Shultz


What, no Robert E.?

Allen Le
Anh Le
Hai Le
Julie Le
Nam Le
Richard Li
Minh Ly
Trung Ly


In lieu of a real name...

Liz Lieu
Eric Liu
J.J. Liu
Serena Liu
Shi Jia Liu


Candidates for the WCP "Davidson Matthew" club

(Explanation: Davidson Matthew is a poker player who came in 2nd in a World Poker Tour event. Ever since then, the entities at Wicked Chops Poker have inducted into the "Davidson Matthew" club any poker player who has two first names or has a name for which it is difficult to tell which is the first and which the last name.)

Daniel Martin
Jesse Martin
John Martin
David Matthew
Danny Ryan
Todd Terry


Let's stop at McDonald's!

Casey McCarrel
Chris McCormack
Tom McCormick
Jim McCrink
David McCollum
Roger McDow
Jesse McEuen
Jesse McGinty
Jonathan McGowan
Jason McIntosh
Michael McKenna
John McKinney
Stephen McKinney
Tom McLaughlin
Calen McNeil
Michael McNeil
Evan McNiff


Hello, Newman!

Jeffrey Neuman
Clayton Newman
Stewart Newman


A "winning" team?

Chi Nguyen
Hoa Nguyen
Men Nguyen
Minh Nguyen
Thang Duc Nguyen
Tracey Nguyen
Ut Nguyen


The Irish are coming! The Irish are coming!

Daniel O'Brien
John O'Brien
Frank O’Dell
Earl Odom
Kevin O'Donnell
Stephen O'Dwyer
Ciaran O'Leary


They've got a phan club

John Phan
Tim Phan
Young Phan


Everything's coming up roses

Jamie Rosen
Russell Rosenblum
Jason Rosenkrantz
Eric Rosenman
Michael Rosenthal


I like these guys, schwartz and all

Mike Schwartz
Noah Schwartz
Ylon Schwartz


If they make it to heads-up, I guess one of these guys is playing the other

Ravi Shankar
Dustin Sitar


Present tense, past tense

Kevin Song
Steve Sung


If the tran has left, you can just catch the next one

David Tran
Hien Tran
J.C. Tran
Jimmy Tran
Mimi Tran
Thanhdat Tran
Theo Tran


They all took a van from the airport

James Van Alstyne
Thierry van den Berg
Roy Vandersluis
Jorryt van Hoof
Anh Van Nguyen


That's enough of this silliness--I have to go catch some z's

Andrey Zaichenko
Jacques Zaicik
Mark Zajdner
Vachagan Zakarian
Scott Zakheim
Benjamin Zamani
Dave Zand
Alan Zarka
Cory Zeidman
Yueqi Zhu
Paul Zimbler
Robert Zipf
Robert Zoellner
Michael Zowie