What's In a Name?

I am currently in Los Angeles visitng with some old friends from USC. It is a little surreal being back here after three years, especially considering I haven't seen some of these people since we graduated back in 2005.

One such person is my friend, Heather, who was my roommate freshman year of college. But here is the really odd thing: since we have last seen each other, she has decided she no longer wants to go by "Heather" and instead refers to herself as Demetria, a play on her maiden name (she got married our senior year).

WTF right? Please tell me others find this as bizarre as I do. Another friend and I were talking about it and agree that you can't just up and change your name, much in the same way you can't just go and give yourself a nickname rather than earn one in a more organic and natural manner. If people ask, I tell them I go by Jess a lot, but I find it bizarre to even introduce myself as anything but Jessica because Jessica is my given name and Jess is something people who have gotten to know me call me.

They also call me Fetch. Sad, right? Poker is a world of nicknames--everyone has some alternative identity. For the online players, their screename serves as their nickname (we'll return to this in a future post) and, for many live pros, their nickname indicates the nature of the way they play like John "The Razor" Phan or, more hilariously, Allen "The Chainsaw" Kessler.

How did "Fetch" come about you may wonder? Court Harrington, that's how. Well, Court and the fact that I tend to just do what I am told without much of a fight. "Walk from the convention center to the Masquerade Tower? Sure" "Go take this to Joe Sebok" "OK!" Obviously, you can just stand to reason how he took to calling me Fetch.

Perhaps my favorite Fetch story is when I received a text message from Court that read: "Fetch-there is a bottle of tylenol in my backpack. Take that and $100 to Jeremiah please."

A few things to clarify:
1) Jeremiah is Jeremiah Smith, a former poker media person turned frequent tournament chip leader. Every event Jeremiah plays he manages to be the chip leader in, unfortunately just not at the very end of play when it matters the most.

2) The $100 is not in Court's backpack. It is assummed Fetch will take $100 of her own money and pass it along to Miah so he can get more masseuse time.

3) Jeremiah is not a P5er, we are not covering him for P5s Live, and therefore it is in no way expected of me to perform this task as part of my job.

Yet, I find myself not even questioning it as I wander into the media room, grab the Tylenol, get $100 out of my wallet, and trapse back out to the Amazon Room to Jeremiah's table.

After the task was complete, I simply texted Court back: "Fetch to the rescue."

Grand Marquis

On Day 3 of the WSOP Main Event, I was trying to keep track of several P5ers still in the running for the bracelet and there was a table boasting a couple of P5ers including Hunter "The_HUNT_D" Frey, who was chip leader at one point. As we were covering Hunter, Jill, Adam, and myself slowly began to convince ourselves that another player at his table was more than likely an online kid as well.

Hunter is a friendly enough guy that wheneverI came by his table we would chit chat a bit. Eventually, the mysterious online player began to chime in and later, he introduced himself as Craig. I asked if he was a P5er and he explained that since he mostly played cash games online, he never bothered to join.

From that point on, every time I saw Craig, he would always make an effort to say hi and I would check in on his progress in the ME. Before long, there were only three tables left and Craig was one of the final 30 players. I was unable to cover much of the ME once the Bellagio Cup got going since I needed to be there most of the day, but I learned that Craig was one of the final ten players. They only needed to lose one more player before we were done until the November 9 returned to finish the event in a few months.

At one point, Craig was all-in against another player who had him covered and he was in bad shape with A-Q against the other player's pocket queens. As Craig backdoored a flush to suck out on him, the other reporters in the media room literally booed at the hand, frustrated they couldn't go home. However, I was so relieved because he was the only person left in the tournament that I had much of a rooting interest in. Granted, we have P5er Scott Montgomery, but we didn't find out about him until I was done reporting.

I had the same conflict with my fellow reporters at WPT. Everyone was just looking forward to going home, so when Mike Watson spiked an A on the river to double through David Benyamine during heads up play I got many a glare when I let out an audible "yeah!", happy to see someone I had been following the whole summer do well.

I wonder when I will hit a point in tournament reporting when I am more excited for the thing to just be over versus wanting someone I feel like I know to do well. Hopefully not anytime soon, considering that might be an indication that I am getting tired of what I am doing.
In the meantime, good luck in November Craig Marquis, I'll be rooting for you.