[Eratosthenes]

During my 30 years or so of working for the man I have been involved in hiring hundreds of new employees, many of them young and only a year or two out of school. I was the final decision maker on many of these hires. With that background, I have a few comments:

1) If you have a significant gap on your resume, you will almost certainly be asked about it. It is a strategic decision whether you put poker on the resume or leave the gap, and are prepared to discuss it in an interview.

2) Never, ever, never lie on your resume. In fact, don't even put literal truth that could be interpreted as a lie on your resume. Companies and government agencies now take this very seriously. If you are found to have lied on your resume, you will be fired immediately and the company may take action to recover things like signing bonuses. I think if you google around some, you can find instances where employees found to have lied on their resumes have been taken to court for damages.

3) These days everybody knows someone who plays poker. Poker is on cable TV several times per week. The stigma of being a professional poker player is small. If you give the impression that you think your poker background is a problem, your propective employers are more likely to think it is a problem.

4) Poker is a very analytical pursuit. The skills and disciplines learned in poker would be attractive to many employers. You should be prepared to discuss those things. As a poker pro, you were 100% responsible for your actions--you didn't have a boss checking up to see that you weren't cold calling raises. Very few young people have this sort of experience and this could be an advantage with some employers.

5) I had security clearances early in my career. Things have changed a lot since then, but I had some fairly dodgy things in my past that did not prevent me from getting fairly high clearances.

6) Most employers do a background check before making an offer to a candidate (or they make the offer contingent on the background check). Since you have had some poker success and published some articles, it is likely that this will be turned up in the background check. Getting through the interview process without mentioning poker and then having it turn up in the background check would be a huge problem. Better to let them know up front.