20 things about Barack Obama

1. His high school basketball nickname was "O'Bomber" and he favored a left-hand, double-pump shot. (He's left-handed.)

2. His mother's name was Stanley Ann Dunham -- her father, Stanley, wanted a boy.

4. His mother and father, Barack Obama Sr., met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii. She was 18. He was a scholarship student from Kenya.

5. While living in Indonesia, his mother would wake him at 4 a.m. for three hours of English lessons before he went to school.

6. His maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was a "Rosie the Riveter" at a Boeing Co. plant in Wichita, Kan., during World War II.

7. He met his wife, Michelle, while she was his adviser one summer when he worked at a corporate law firm in Chicago. She also is a Harvard Law School graduate.

8. On his first date with his wife, they had ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins in Chicago. (One of his jobs as a teen was scooping ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins.)

10. During his community organizing days, some residents in Chicago dubbed him "baby face" because of his youthful looks.

11. He considers his worst habit to be checking his BlackBerry.

12. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, but in eighth grade, he got a D in French.

13. His prized possession is a photograph of the cliffs of Oahu's South Shore, where his mother's ashes are scattered.

14. He is a good -- but cautious-- poker player who joined other lawmakers in Springfield, Ill., for weekly games. They dubbed their group "The Committee."

16. He carries good luck charms, including a gambler's lucky chit, a tiny Madonna and child, and a bracelet belonging to a soldier deployed in Iraq.

17. He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali.

18. He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life.

19. He has promised his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, a dog this fall -- win or lose.

20. He doesn't like to shop and he prefers green tea to coffee.