Mentioning Gambling to Admissions Committees?

[YeOldeMan]

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So how are adcoms likely to view gambling? I'm considering mentioning it, and I can definitely spin it in a positive light. Though the postivies are not really all that pertinent to medicine, so I don't know if they'll just take a negative view of it.

By gambling I pretty much mean poker (tournaments and online), not sports team betting or lottery or stuff like that.

EDIT:
I do play for money.

EDIT2: Just though my post a bit down would probably be better in the original post.

I haven't tried counting cards. I might pick up a book about that one day, but I play poker along those lines.
It's an interesting game. I can apply some probabilistic and combinatorial and maths principles and do quick number crunching in my head and be a decent player. It's also very competitive and gives you a taste of risk versus return. Playing against people like this in tournaments is very intriguing.
What worries me is that this an aggressive environment. It's competitive, and there are stakes that drive everybody to win. It's a good environment for those thinking about going into industry. I don't know if they want doctors to be this aggressive though.
It's also a departure from the norm, and theres this whole casino bum stigma to it.

 

[45408]

You could always leave it off your paper application, and in an interview, if it seems appropriate, you could mention it. If someone told me that they played (and did well) in poker tournaments, that would be pretty cool.

 

[ILikeDrugs]

I guess it depends on what type of player you are. If I were to say that I love blackjack because of the statistics challenge involved, than it would seem like harmless fun. Now if I were to say I play blackjack at the casino every weekend chasing the $300 that I lost the weekend before, I might come off as an addict. Gambling addiction might lead to other types of addictions to help cope with the loses. That wouldn't go over so well with the adcoms.

 

[YeOldeMan]

You could always leave it off your paper application, and in an interview, if it seems appropriate, you could mention it. If someone told me that they played (and did well) in poker tournaments, that would be pretty cool.

I guess it depends on what type of player you are. If I were to say that I love blackjack because of the statistics challenge involved, than it would seem like harmless fun. Now if I were to say I play blackjack at the casino every weekend chasing the $300 that I lost the weekend before, I might come off as an addict. Gambling addiction might lead to other types of addictions to help cope with the loses. That wouldn't go over so well with the adcoms.

I haven't tried counting cards. I might pick up a book about that one day, but I play poker along those lines.
It's an interesting game. I can apply some probabilistic and combinatorial and maths principles and do quick number crunching in my head and be a decent player. It's also very competitive and gives you a taste of risk versus return. Playing against people like this in tournaments is very intriguing.
What worries me is that this an aggressive environment. It's competitive, and there are stakes that drive everybody to win. It's a good environment for those thinking about going into industry. I don't know if they want doctors to be this aggressive though.
It's also a departure from the norm, and theres this whole casino bum stigma to it.

LizzyM or other adcoms, any thoughts?

 

[LizzyM]

If it is a hobby that you enjoy, you might want to discuss it during an interview or as a response to a secondary prompt if it seems pertinent. Just as someone can enjoy making beer or wine (or just buying it and drinking it) without being an alcoholic, I think that most of us know that one can enjoy poker without being addicted to gambling. The games of skill can be enjoyable and I think that most adcom members would recognize that. Playing the slots might be a different story.

 

[Disinence2]

How does Lizzy always know when she is needed?

 

[45408]

How does Lizzy always know when she is needed?

You can always name search.

 

[JediZero]

I would be very careful with this one. It doesn't sound like you have any sort of problem from this, and that it's simply a challenging hobby for you. But my advisor is constantly reminding us that admissions committees tend to be pretty conservative, and you don't want to give them any reason to reject you. In this day and age, I don't think gambling has quite the stigma that it used to, but you never know.

I wouldn't volunteer this information unless they start asking specifically about your hobbies. If that happens during an interview, read their reactions and proceed accordingly.

 

[cubssox2000]

I mentioned it during one of my interviews. It just came up. I think the question started as, "what do you do in your spare time", and went from there.

Side note: The interviewer was an M4, not a professor or Dean, so it was much more relaxed. I probably would not have mentioned it to a professor.

 

[futureboy]

There is a recent thread titled (something like) "how do I account for the last x years" that discusses the gambling issue. The thread was started by a professional jazz musician who supplements his income by playing online poker. It's an interesting read.

 

[Bowl of oranges]

How many 40+ people have you told that you play? What reaction did you receive? Im sure you guess where im going with this. I have friends who also make a living online, when they told their parents it took like 2 weeks of explaining for them to be ok with it. Basically from my perspective, i would never mention it.

 

[Optimalsauce]

To the majority of people, playing poker is gambling, and not the skill game that it is. Chances are people will see it as if you gamble in your spare time, what will stop you from gambling with patients??

You have to spin it that when you play poker, you are making calculated decisions, which is similar to ruling in and ruling out diagnoses with patients because probabilities are used here, and not gambling or flipping a coin. I foresee people unwilling to accept that answer because of the preconceived notion that people believe poker = gambling. But if you sell well, go for it. I just think it is an unnecessary risk.

In the end, you play poker, use your poker skills here to come up with an appropriate play when you sit down in your interview. "Read your opponent"

 

[spyderracing32]

I don't understand why it took your friend 2 weeks to explain to his parents that he was playing cards for a living. All it took me was printing off my stats and showing my parents that my hourly income over a significant sample size (500k+ hands) would free them of having to go into debt over my education.

If it has been a significant thing in your life, mention it. I included it in my activities section on the primary application because, for all intents and purposes, it served as my primary income freshman and sophomore year. The key is being able to talk about it in the proper manner. If you can go on about how it's a game of imperfect information and you're constantly digging for information (hard stats, not eye-twitches...) in order to form a better picture of what the other player is holding, you're golden. The logic used to make decisions in poker is really quite analogous to that used in medicine to form a diagnosis. No body sits at a card table screaming "I have a full house", and no body walks into a hospital screaming "I have meningitis". You need to take everything in context, procure as much information as you can, and make your diagnosis within some probabilistic parameters (even with highly accurate tests in the case of something like meningitis there are false-positives/false-negatives occurring at some rate... variance!).

Sure a lot of people view poker as gambling (because it is), but if you don't mention it, you'll never have an opportunity to plead your case. People associate gambling with degeneracy, and not professionalism. If you can put out the aire of having pursued something like this in a professional manner (play analysis, goal setting, determined stop-loss points, etc.), I don't think it will reflect poorly. Just don't come off like a degenerate (which I hope you can do because you aren't one, and not because it's what the adcom wants to hear 😉), and you won't be viewed as one.

 

[Optimalsauce]

spyderracing: I don't think it is an easy sell like you think it is. It's like trying to convince someone on the other side of the political spectrum that what they've been thinking their entire life has been wrong. I just see it as difficult to convince someone that your activities are actually risk adverse and not risk loving. Risk loving pre-meds are not what schools are looking for.

More power to you if you can make it happen, but maybe on the flip side you'd be much better off in sales and not in medicine.

 

[KingstonPre]

Put it this way... it's a risk you shouldn't be willing to take. Hold your cards...

 

[spyderracing32]

spyderracing: I don't think it is an easy sell like you think it is. It's like trying to convince someone on the other side of the political spectrum that what they've been thinking their entire life has been wrong. I just see it as difficult to convince someone that your activities are actually risk adverse and not risk loving. Risk loving pre-meds are not what schools are looking for.

More power to you if you can make it happen, but maybe on the flip side you'd be much better off in sales and not in medicine.

It's not about being risk-averse vs. having a risk affinity, it's about managing risk. This is something you need to know how to do in medicine, and it's not something a lot of pre-meds have any experience in doing. It may not be an easy sell, but if you've approached the game properly there is a lot of value in the skills it develops. I think it's ridiculous to cover it up because some proportion of the population is ignorant to the reality of the game (it is not glitz and glamor; it is many mundane hours in front of a screen watching hands, data mining, and crunching numbers). The adcoms need to be given a little credit. These are intelligent people, and so long as you articulate yourself well and don't say, "I bought in for my bankroll, doubled it, let it ride on the highest stake I could buy into and then lost as a 90/10 favorite on the turn to a gut-shot straight! I'm SO UNLUCKY BUT WOWOW WHAT A RUUUUUUUUSH!", then I think you should have a reasonable shot at being understood.

Every naysayer in this conversation (its been done a few times) has been some other pre-med student who's guess is as good as yours in regard to what the adcom is looking for. When I asked whether or not I should include it in my primary, I got the same response, but Lizzy M came in and said (to paraphrase, but it's close) "It's too cool to leave off." I think I'm going to go with Lizzy M on this one considering she is an adcom, and SDN guru to the pre-med community.

 

[RomanCandle]

I agree with spyder. I've been playing for several years online and it's very much a game of using imperfect information and tendencies to make strong educated guesses. What confuses me is that poker is analogous to chess if you're playing competitively, yet it would be looked upon much more favorably if you were a high level chess player rather than a poker player. At the same time I don't think many people doubt the high skill factor involved, especially with how well understood it's become over the past decade, so can it really hurt to bring it up?

 

[Law2Doc]

So how are adcoms likely to view gambling? I'm considering mentioning it, and I can definitely spin it in a positive light. Though the postivies are not really all that pertinent to medicine, so I don't know if they'll just take a negative view of it.

By gambling I pretty much mean poker (tournaments and online), not sports team betting or lottery or stuff like that.

EDIT:
I do play for money.

EDIT2: Just though my post a bit down would probably be better in the original post.

I think the movie "21" is narrated in the context of a med school interview, and that seemed to go well for the character. But in real life, I think you have to be very careful with activities that others deem vices and addictions. It's fine to talk about tournament play and national competitions, but I would probably play down the habitual aspects, such as regular casino trips or nightly online gambling.

 

[spyderracing32]

I think the movie "21" is narrated in the context of a med school interview, and that seemed to go well for the character. But in real life, I think you have to be very careful with activities that others deem vices and addictions. It's fine to talk about tournament play and national competitions, but I would probably play down the habitual aspects, such as regular casino trips or nightly online gambling.

Why play down the habitual aspects if they're not vices? Would a football player not talk about the hours spent in the gym in preparation for a game? Would a doctor undertaking a risky procedure not tell you about the hours of review he undertook in preparation for it? It's not like you sit there going "I've got the itch, I've got to play, now!" The habitual aspects, at least on a professional level, boil down to the fact that you always need to be one step ahead of your competition. You need to be constantly analyzing, constantly mining data, and constantly going over this data because more recent data is going to be more relevant in such a dynamic game. I've read essays on the game, and learned concepts developed by some of the top players in the game in much the same way a scientist (or probably more relevantly a mathematician) would read journal articles.

Have no doubts about it, professional tournament play is at least as habitual (and probably more so due to the scheduled nature of the games) as cash game play. National tournaments (the closest to which we have being the WSOP events) are all bought into or won into (rarely at no cost but often a steep discount; that being, say, $1k in satellite fees vs. $5k straight buy in... nice little $4k EV cushion there though). It's not like these are national football/baseball/basketball tournaments where you need to be invited to play. ANYONE can play in them. What separates the degenerate from the professional is their difference in habits. The degenerate habitually does nothing to improve his game, makes rash decisions, and plays on some magical property called "feel". The professional habitually looks at data, analyzes his own games, analyzes the games of others, looks to optimize +EV situations, and plays on probability with a strong understanding of variance (so as not to lose one's head when the cards don't fall as they probabilistically "should").

This is going to be my rule of thumb for talking about card playing: If when discussing the game a lay-person would have a hard time discerning whether you are talking about investment banking or card playing, then go ahead. If you can talk about the game as something you enjoy doing on occasion for fun, then don't go out of your way to bring it up, but if the time is right then it's probably ok. If you can only talk about the game in the context of luck, then stay away.

 

[mirrorpair]

I remember someone who played professionally--by that I mean they spent all day playing internet poker to make ends meet. Quite literally--he made about $20k a year doing this.

Most people think it is fun but it is really boring.

From what I was told, you typically have 8-10 hands open at the same time and you fold most of them. When you have a statistically good hand, you play it. To know if you have a good hand, you have to memorize a bunch of information and do a lot of calculating in your head. Every card that is put down makes calculating the odds (and the amount you should bid) more and more complicated. Eventually you get the hang of it and it becomes monotonous. The exciting part is when a tilt happens--when somebody who doesn't know how to play well starts losing money and goes crazy with the bidding.

This is when you can make the most money.

Anyway, I like that story. When I think of professional gamers, I think of Paul Newman in 'The Hustler' and how much fun his life is. Nah--it isn't that. It's sitting in front of a computer screen for 8 hours a day and saying 'I fold'.

 

[Compass]

Coupled with your speeding tickets, it would make you look like a compulsive risk taker...

 

[spyderracing32]

I remember someone who played professionally--by that I mean they spent all day playing internet poker to make ends meet. Quite literally--he made about $20k a year doing this.

Most people think it is fun but it is really boring.

From what I was told, you typically have 8-10 hands open at the same time and you fold most of them. When you have a statistically good hand, you play it. To know if you have a good hand, you have to memorize a bunch of information and do a lot of calculating in your head. Every card that is put down makes calculating the odds (and the amount you should bid) more and more complicated. Eventually you get the hang of it and it becomes monotonous. The exciting part is when a tilt happens--when somebody who doesn't know how to play well starts losing money and goes crazy with the bidding.

This is when you can make the most money.

Anyway, I like that story. When I think of professional gamers, I think of Paul Newman in 'The Hustler' and how much fun his life is. Nah--it isn't that. It's sitting in front of a computer screen for 8 hours a day and saying 'I fold'.

If you're playing for $20k a year, and playing more than a couple hours a day, it's time to stop because you're marginal at best and probably a long term losing/break-even player experiencing some variance. I'd think someone was pretty crazy if they played full-time to live around the poverty line.

The game is SO much more than folding until you have a good hand. The methodology behind making decisions in the game is VERY interesting. Waiting for aces, kings, queens, etc. (all those primo hands), while probabilistically favorable is an easy strategy to beat (but probably the best at lower stakes; knowing how attentive your opponent is, also very important). You still have to post blinds, and waiting all the time for those hands bleeds money that other players are willing to move on with less than favorable hands (although they know you're being way too stingy with the hands you're playing, so the play is +EV in this context). Seriously, the game is INTERESTING and if you can explain it well, it's something that you should talk about.

 

[YeOldeMan]

Coupled with your speeding tickets, it would make you look like a compulsive risk taker...

Lol if they find out about my speeding encounters, and my poker gambling...let's just say they won't look at it favorably. In fact, if I don't resolve this behemoth ticket I'm looking at right now (by that I mean plea it down to a, in all probability, HUGE fine and/or community service and DD school + no records) I'm even going to ask that my name be removed from online records of poker events.

Online poker is a bore...sittin in front of my computer playin 5 hands using scripts I wrote enhance my calculations. It used to be a significant part of my income after I turned 18, and it trumped any dead-end $8/hr jobs other kids my age were getting -- but these days working is more important than that. Occasionally if I'm short for cash I'll hit up a frat house and put up with the drunk smokers, who are loaded and make crazy impulsive bets left and right.

I think the appropriate plan of action might be to leave it out in the apps, and try to read the interviewer and see what he might feel about that. It's tough though...I've seen everything front hard-right preacher-types calling me "immoral" to insane left-wingers (who considered themselves "progressive") calling me "degenerate". Most people still don't approve of it.

 

[YeOldeMan]

If you're playing for $20k a year, and playing more than a couple hours a day, it's time to stop because you're marginal at best and probably a long term losing/break-even player experiencing some variance. I'd think someone was pretty crazy if they played full-time to live around the poverty line.

The game is SO much more than folding until you have a good hand. The methodology behind making decisions in the game is VERY interesting. Waiting for aces, kings, queens, etc. (all those primo hands), while probabilistically favorable is an easy strategy to beat (but probably the best at lower stakes; knowing how attentive your opponent is, also very important). You still have to post blinds, and waiting all the time for those hands bleeds money that other players are willing to move on with less than favorable hands (although they know you're being way too stingy with the hands you're playing, so the play is +EV in this context). Seriously, the game is INTERESTING and if you can explain it well, it's something that you should talk about.

14 PS on the MCAT. hehe....poka guy 👍

 

[ChemEngSoonMD]

So how are adcoms likely to view gambling? I'm considering mentioning it, and I can definitely spin it in a positive light. Though the postivies are not really all that pertinent to medicine, so I don't know if they'll just take a negative view of it.

By gambling I pretty much mean poker (tournaments and online), not sports team betting or lottery or stuff like that.

EDIT:
I do play for money.

EDIT2: Just though my post a bit down would probably be better in the original post.

When in doubt, don't include it. Not worth the risk.

 

[MarieMarie]

When in doubt, don't include it. Not worth the risk.

Eh, it's a serious interest/hobby for him. Other people list things like golfing and knitting, why not include poker? It might help you stand out from the pack. I would just be honest and include it <--How appropriate

 

[mirrorpair]

Lol if they find out about my speeding encounters, and my poker gambling...let's just say they won't look at it favorably. In fact, if I don't resolve this behemoth ticket I'm looking at right now (by that I mean plea it down to a, in all probability, HUGE fine and/or community service and DD school + no records) I'm even going to ask that my name be removed from online records of poker events.

Online poker is a bore...sittin in front of my computer playin 5 hands using scripts I wrote enhance my calculations. It used to be a significant part of my income after I turned 18, and it trumped any dead-end $8/hr jobs other kids my age were getting -- but these days working is more important than that. Occasionally if I'm short for cash I'll hit up a frat house and put up with the drunk smokers, who are loaded and make crazy impulsive bets left and right.

I think the appropriate plan of action might be to leave it out in the apps, and try to read the interviewer and see what he might feel about that. It's tough though...I've seen everything front hard-right preacher-types calling me "immoral" to insane left-wingers (who considered themselves "progressive") calling me "degenerate". Most people still don't approve of it.

In my book, you're innovative--most don't know how to play poker well (including me) and this skill involves quickly thinking on your feet and taking an immediate, concrete action. That sounds somewhat similar to situations you'd encounter in medicine. Your situation is tough--what you've done shows real smarts and the ability to do quick decision making... that's important in medicine. Then again, people are prejudiced against it.

So what I'd do is talk about playing poker with other people 'for fun' and mention some of the thought process that goes into it if it comes up in an interview. At least you show your abilities that way! But have no doubt--juggling all that information and effectively using it to get ahead is a tremendous skill you should be proud of.

 

[RomanCandle]

There really is a whole lot about being a dedicated poker player that could apply to medicine, even indirect things such as dealing with stress during downswings and keeping things in perspective. I think its a shame if you can't bring any of that up because of someone thinking your just a degenerate, especially if its a huge passion of yours.