The icons near the names are the icons that go into the icon list, currently:
The first icon: is for this challenge: Race for the Galaxy 1 on 1 Galactic Master Challenge.
The remaining icons are the last 12 winners with the icon on the left being the most recent. When a new game is completed the Galactic Master places their icon just to the right of the and takes the last icon on the right off the list (unless it is their own, then they remove the oldest icon of another person). So the list has at most 12 icons.
This will continue until people get tired or playing or someone manages to get all 12 icons.
You can get your own icon by sending $19.95 to… Well, actually you just decide what icon you want to use. Preferably, use the same icon for every challenge thread. You can copy and paste the icon list, and you will see that the icons are just a word with a colon on either side. “:rocket :” (in this case I’ve added a space after the word so you can actually see the text, without the space the rocket appears). The icons can be found under the smiley where there are formatting options for your post.