So I sign up for Full Tilt with the screenname "Racist88"...

[WhoIam]

Note: I am NOT racist. Please don't flame me.

For a while I've been thinking about signing up for a poker site with a screenname designed to offend people. I was curious to see if I would get more action when people went out of their way to bust me. The name would have to offend the easily offendable without blatantly violating the terms of the site. I decided to implement my plan at Full Tilt because I heard that players there were extremely tight.

The name I chose was "Racist88" (88 is neo-nazi shorthand for "Heil Hitler") because I didn't think I could get away with "Wh1te P0wer." I planned to be very civil in my chats but if someone mentioned my SN, I would say something like "why yes, I am a racist." I would be very careful to actually say anything racist or hateful, just acknowledge that I'm a despicable racist.

In practice the idea didn't work. At all. No one mentioned my name, asked if I was racist, told me to go to hell, etc. I did get a couple "good hand racist"-type comments. No one played any differently against me. My experiment was a failure.

Anyway, I suffer some horrible beats and end up losing $200 in the process of clearing the first $20 of the bonus. I say "screw this" and decide to cash out and maybe tackle the bonus later. Several hours later I get the following email:

"It has been brought to our attention that your playerID may be seen as offensive or inappropriate to other players.

At this time, we request that you change your playerID to another name... In the interim, we have paused your account, and voided your recent withdrawal request."

WTF? Changing my name is understandable, but that's no reason I shouldn't be able to withdraw my funds. This just pisses me off because I could be putting the money to better use elesewhere.