"The Pen:" Live NLHE Chat Thread

Mentioning poker in a job interview is all downside and extremely limited upside. It's way more likely that someone doesn't think a gambler is an appropriate hire than that you run into someone who has anything more than a casual interest in poker.

Traveling, volunteering and working part time. Maybe even day trading.

Not sure what the position you’re applying for but near 100% sure mentioning poker would be a mistake.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

C'mon, davo, it goes something like this:

"Professional, part-time poker player. That gave me the experience to read people, so I'll be able to tell which applicants are deadbeats and won't pay."

Seriously, GL with interview #2, lettuce know.

I just don’t believe this at all

Having a 60-90 second story/description of poker, why you played, how you won and why you want to leave it would be an advantage I think in most professions

doggy day care is better than poker

if they ask about it in more details you can you frame it as "during that time, you needed to take care of grandma/write a memoir/travel/join a renaissance faire/volunteer with canadians, something which is no longer needed, and a part time job at doggy day care was an ideal solution"

i'm with you, but do you think our fanny packed hero will be able to clearly illustrate these traits without coming off as a total degenerate who will raid the till when nobody is looking to fund his gambling addiction?

there's also a decent subset of the population which won't care what you say whatsoever

i have a number of people who know me and know i've been doing this full time since 2016 and yet are convinced it's just a matter of time before i go busto - doesn't matter if i show them my financials and 8 years of profits and my data models, they are convinced that busto is right around the corner

I get that some people refuse to open their minds to poker and advantage gambling and distrust it/don’t believe in it. I just rarely meet them and if I do, I’m not interested in working with/talking with those people anyway

Also get that our boy might not have the right form of words

Other point though…he’s gonna be a mortgage broker. Those guys, along with real estate agents and lawyers make up a disproportionate amount of poker room populations

Maybe it’s different in upside down land but I’ve come across very few people who don’t play themselves that understand the concept of advantage gambling. They’ll either think you’re a liar, a degenerate or both. In most cases, they are probably right…

How many people tell you they are winners? What percentage of them do you think are actually winning? What percentage of those that are winning are anything that fishes on a heater?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

To the first point….must be

To the second. That’s a gambling world question. You and I both know that nothing is what it seems inside a casino but I think if I told someone I’d been playing poker for a living for xx months or years and gave them a short summary of how and why I’d expect almost all of them to believe me

No. Just say that you tried a couple of things on the side and they didn't work out. Trading stocks is something that is hard to verify.

I was the "hiring manager" for many years when I did real world work. I would have been glad to hire people with a poker background assuming they had the other quals but I suspect that is an outlier and it's probably not a good thing to cite for a finance position.

I'll be interviewing with an older woman (SHOCKER!) so....I will save my poker stories for AFTER I get hired.

Yea, I'm never disclosing that I'm a poker player. There is almost zero upside as I can't imagine that being the deciding factor between me and another candidate. Considering most poker players are losers anyway, I'm just going to assume they inflate their skill.

In other news, just had the sketchiest descent down from the i70 tunnel into Silverthorne. Traffic is going 8mph down the hill. I have studded snow tires and still slid completely into the other lane. Happened a couple more times, but not as bad. Planned on hitting up Beaver Creek with APD, but I asked that we stay east of Vail pass bc I'm a pussy.

If you need to explain a gap in the resume, you can say, "Apologies, I had to sign an NDA and am unable to disclose any information. Thank you for understanding."

But vail got all the snow!

Installed a new faucet in the master bathroom sink last night. As usual for such processes, the install was a snap, but getting the old fixtures out was a nightmare. Aside from the usual frozen nuts that you can't reach and which don't have enough room to turn a wrench once you finally get it on there, there was also the drain-pipe that couldn't be removed because it didn't fit out of the hole in the sink in either direction. I have no idea how it was originally installed, but it was finally remove by cutting the pipe above the obstructing protrusion and below the nut. Glad I have a dremel.

missed opportunity for quality father-son bonding time with davo imo

They got like 9", yeah. Woulda been nice. Breck was still a lot of fun and best day of the season yet.

It’s a finance/banking/mortgages job right?

Definitely don’t mention poker, to them it might be a red flag for a gambler interviewing to be a steward of potentially large sums of money.

It’s like saying you habitually smoke pot in an interview for the FBI or CIA.

It's probably OK to mention a hobby of "playing cards with friends, sometimes Texas Hold 'Em" and see how they react. Most likely they will go just "OK cool" and be like "great he has friends" instead of going down a rabbit hole. IMO most interviewers like to learn a bit about a person outside of work too. This is an innocuous way to drop a hint, and in the off chance they share the interest they will ask a follow-up.

You’ve convinced me not to mention poker.

If they ask how I stayed busy between Doggy Day Care shifts, I will use the safer “taught myself Tagalog to become a freelance critic for the Filipino film industry.”

Interviewer: "nakakatuwa yan"

“I am learning underwater basket weaving and taking a community college course about ancient Indonesian brass musical instruments.”

This a-hole kept riding my lift today. I flipped him the bird when he wasn’t looking because I’m not rude, but I also wanted to express myself. It’s allowed, it’s in the Geneva Convention.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk