Remember when "Isildur1" came out of nowhere to battle the big names on Full Tilt Poker? Nobody knew who he was. The buzz was real. People of poker forums tossed out the names of just about any Swede they knew; there was even one guy on TwoPlusTwo who supposedly went on a trip to Scandinavia to find out who was behind the screen name.
And then, after having signed with PokerStars, Viktor Blom was introduced from behind a little curtain in the Bahamas before playing a heads-up match Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier.
A lot of the top online players start out anonymous, only to share their screen name with other players, and before you know it, the entire world knows.