Hi all - The consensus from reading other posts and opinions is that you should NEVER put poker on your resume, because of the fact that one of the few ways that you might be considered is if the recruiter or manager is also himself a player and respects your "career" or amazed by your description of it- which is unlikely.


BUT.... here's a little about my situation.....


After SIX years of playing professionally for a decent (yet declining) income and after literally millions of hands I'm completely burnt out and frustrated as to where poker has headed, demoralized, sick of the swings, looking for stability, you name it... for every reason in the book I'm quitting poker and going back to the real world.


That leaves me in a very difficult spot since I have a six year resume gap to explain. Let me give you my background - I got my B.S. in Biology/Comp Sci., worked as a Software Engineer for six years then quit to play poker for a living for six more years. I did acquire some skills in my former job but now am almost completely rusty so perhaps I'd go back to QA testing or a less prominent position in the software field.


What do I do about the gap? Almost impossible to avoid talking about poker. Even if I put some jargon on my resume like "Self Employment in an Online Business" I'm going to have to explain it at the interview.... HELP!!!

imo you're going to have to explain the poker. There's simply no way around it.

Most of the time this question is being considered it's a hotshot 23 year old trying to land an IB job by showing the recruiter that he made $75k playing poker during college. Your situation seems a lot different.

With that said, there's a good reason it's normally not recommended. It's going to be tough to pull this off. Good luck.

Say you sold stuff on E-bay.

This is easy and will look good on your resume. For the past 6 years you were self employed running your own web business.

I wouldn't put it on your resume, but you'll probably have to talk about it during the interview. IMO as long as you speak about it rationally and intelligently the only way it will come across as negative is if the interviewer has some former bad experience with poker or gambling. As long as you can express the positive experiences you've gained from playing poker and the reasons you're walking away and then make yourself sound passionate about what you're going to be doing, I think you'll be fine.

You sold your soul to the devil and now you are condemned a life of minimum wage level employment.

Don, don't depress me.

About the Ebay thing... it sounds like a good idea and just mentioning it would be easy to pull off, however I don't know the first thing about an e-bay business and risk getting caught in a big lie, especially if they are looking for evidence that my business existed.

Then when they ask you about it, you will have to either lie more or come clean.

I would leave it off the resume. If asked about the six year gap, you could instead say that you wandered the earth seeking adventure.

This 100% relies on what stakes you play (claim to play), and any past tournament wins.

If you played .25/.50 and grinded out 2k per month for 6 years, you are hooped.

If you made 6 figures the first 3 years, and 60-70k+ your last year, you have no worries.


Explain that when you had your first big year, you ran statistical analysis of your hands and "if conditions remained the same" you would be able to maintain an hourly rate higher then any available job, and thus play for a living until retirement.

However, with the decline in popularity of poker, and the legal situation with online poker, you have seen conditions change, and now with this new knowledge you have decided to quit poker, while still a winning player.

Enforce the idea that you worked 9am to 5pm 6 days a week, giving yourself 15 minute breaks every 2 hours and 30 minutes for lunch. Drop the line "Poker requires extreme discipline".

If I heard that in an interview, I would snap hire you.

Also, if it's a woman you're ****ed. Not being sexist, 90% of woman just don't grasp the idea of poker as a job. It would be like most guys opinion of an aspiring actress.

running an eBay business is dumb and sounds even dumber to recruiters/potential employers. The other suggestion of 'I had an internet business that went belly-up' needs more investigating, and you should look into it.

Just be honest. Six years is too long to lie about. What you need to do is take poker and show how it correlates to the job you are applying for in the future. Show how poker developed skill sets which complement that job. How you relay it is key. If you sound like a well spoken professional and have your **** together people tend to be more lenient in their judgment from what I've found. The fact that you were able to do it for six years should also say something about how successful you were.

I wouldn't just "snap hire" a pro poker player...

Also, I doubt if it's related to sex at all. Many people doing hiring would be wary of hiring a pro poker player - man or woman.

Most people who claim to play poker for a living are horrible and use their 'professional' status as an excuse for their unemployment thus snap hiring them would be a terrible decision. This is the #1 reason why I never say anything to anyone about poker within the borders of the US.

Hey WhatShouldIDo, lets go to the fundamentals.
Ask yourself questions before making any decisions, but ask intelligent questions.

Do i love poker?
Why i dedicated 6 years of my life to poker? What did i gain? What did i lose?
Why am i quitting?
Is really working 9-5, respond to a boss, decrease in some manner my income what i want for the rest of my life?
Am i a bad player? Was i a bad player for the full 6 years?

The motivations that you are getting for leaving the poker world are strong enough to sit in a desk and have a fixed income and work to someone else?

Before get in trouble or geting worried about the resume, look inside yourself and check it out if is that what your real want to do. If so, then i advise you to be completely honest with others, be pratical, be honest. Lies have a short leg.
If you decided to get back to poker, we welcome you back.

Another ideia is maybe you can get a part-time job with fixed income and poker the variable income.