Quote:
Originally Posted by
mickeycrimm
He was a famous pro long before the poker boom. He didn't give himself the name "Miami John." The poker world was small before the boom. Everybody knew everybody. But John is a common name. They called him "Miami John" as a way to distinguish him from the other Johns.
Correct.
Prior to the 2000s, it was very common for players to be given nicknames related to where they were from.
There was even a joke about this in the sitcom "It's a Living" in the 1980s, where Sonny (the pathetic piano player character) comes back having lost his ass in a Gardena (LA area) card room. He's chided by another character for trying to bluff "a guy named after a state", and that was funny at the time because anyone known enough to be nicknamed after a location was assumed to be a poker shark.
The location nickname thing stopped in the 2000s because the poker boom made the community so large that it no longer made sense.
