stevesbets

I first would like to sincerely apologize for not blogging in forever, lots of changes are happening right now and I’m going to write a megablog here to inform my loyal readers on the minutia of my life. First I want to talk a bit about my business school applications and results (and tilt a bit). Ever since I was little, I was always considered “smart” by those who society deemed qualified to evaluate such things. I was near the top of most of my classes, went to a good college (which was the sole one I applied to) and graduated with honors. I write this not to brag as I am far prouder of some other accomplishments that most people would consider very pedestrian (maybe I’ll write a  future blog about those) but merely to explain that I am simply not used to academic rejection. With that in mind, excuse my frustration as I tell my B school application story.

I knew in the fall that I wanted to be in Philly or NYC for B school so I only applied to 4 schools, NYU Stern, Columbia, Wharton and Fordham GBA. From my preliminary research, there were 3 primary objective factors to getting into B school which were undergrad university/GPA, GMAT score and work experience. As far as test scores and GPA goes, I was right in the ballpark for a top school (which NYU, Wharton and Columbia all are), and as for work experience, well I had my work cut out for me with how to spin poker. I took great care on my applications to try to explain the difficulty of surviving 3 years in the poker world, making my moniker “stevesbets” into a marketable brand name, and writing a blog that gets thousands of hits.

I was granted interviews everywhere which was a great first step since many applicants are denied interviews, but at NYU, Wharton and Columbia that is as far as I got.  Each rejection frustrated me more and more, particularly Wharton since I went to Penn undergrad and have strong emotional and tangible connections with the University. It also didn’t help that the very day I received word of my rejection I got a solicitation for  money. As a result of this rejection I will NEVER give my undergrad alma mater a dime. My friend Luke (http://lukekim.blogspot.com) says that this stance is silly since the fund raising department has nothing to do with Wharton admissions. He has always been far more robotic and perhaps logical than me, and I cannot give them the same pardon that he would.

Anyway, Wharton offered what I think is an incredibly unique service: they were willing to have an admissions committee representative chat with me for 20 minutes about why i got rejected, of course I took them up on this. The woman came on the phone and I really wish I had recorded the conversation, I will paraphrase what she said to the best of my ability.

“Steven, So I’m looking at your application and you are obviously very bright. All your scores are great and you would be a great addition to our community. With that said, we were kind of grasping at straws with you, trying to find a reason to accept you and in the end we just couldn’t. You have done nothing professionally for 2+ years since college aside from play cards, you have shown zero teamwork, leadership, accountability to anyone except yourself or ties to the community.”

Now since this was a very kind service, I knew I couldn’t waste her time and mine defending myself, but I couldn’t help but ask if all those things were her way of paraphrasing that she wanted me to have a more standard job. Her response:

“Well a job may help, but frankly we are very open minded and we take people that do all sorts of interesting and obscure things. It’s just that you’ve shown no leadership, teamwork or accountability”

At this point I couldn’t resist but say one thing about my application since it directly contradicted what she was saying, I pointed out a very strong recommendation from someone who staked me who I won alot for (meaning someone who TRUSTED me with a large sum of money, had FAITH in my poker ability, who I was ACCOUNTABLE too and who had success with me). Her response:

“Well yes that’s true, but you still int eh past 2 years you have shown no teamwork, leadership and little accountability so that left us in a bind and we had to pass”

The conversation pretty much ended there and I thanked her for her time. The thing that really bugged me about her commentary was her way of paraphrasing that they wanted me to have a “legitimate” business job and my lack of one was the reason for my rejection. I believe she chose not to say it that way because she didn’t want Wharton to come off as close minded. How could she say I haven’t shown leadership when I’ve supported myself all on my own for over 5 years now? How could she say I’ve shown no accountability when other people trust me with sums of money far greater than most people right out of college deal with? As for ties to the community, do most people who enter business school volunteer at a boys and girls club? I thought they were too busy working 100 hours a week to create community ties. End of rant.

Anyway, I got into Fordham and I am thrilled to be going to New York. My classes are in a great location right by Columbus Circle and I look forward to making those other schools regret their decision. I was told by my Columbia interviewer that B schools want people that will be successful alumni who make tons of money so they can brag about them. That is the only way to make those schools regret their decision. I have to say it will be very strange to no longer be just a poker player, I have been doing it for a full three years and going back to school will be interesting, I am very excited for the opportunity.

To switch gears, it has been just a day and a month since the coke pepsi challenge (see an earlier blog for details). Since that day I have been running really hot at poker for pretty much the first time since last thanksgiving. I have been playing on average about 10 hours a day in that stretch of time, a number that will have to go drastically down once I move to NYC and start school.  If you live in the city, feel free to drop me a line (by leaving a comment, i don’t always get the emails from the form on this blog since the spammers found it)

Now onto a couple random tilts before I wrap this blog up. I went to see the Dark Knight in IMAX a few days after it came out. It was my favorite movie ever and I”ll probably write a future blog about it, but for now I just need to tilt about parents who don’t control their kids. I think society needs MUCH harsher laws against people that disturb the peace.Repeatedly talking loudly in a movie theater full of people that paid money to be absorbed by the film is totally unacceptable. Little kids obviously cannot be held accountable, but their parents sure as hell should be. At batman, there was a family of 4 behind me with two little kids. They constantly screamed, talked loudly and kicked my seat throughout the movie. Their parents did little to nothing to make them behave better. If your kids cannot behave in a socially acceptable manner at a movie, don’t bring them! I honestly cannot FATHOM letting potential future kids of mine annoy a theater full of strangers without doing something. I think the parents should be fined the price of the tickets of everyone in the theater, that would stop such outrageous failure to act

One more tilt, then I’ll let u leave and go read another blog or do whatever else it is my readers do with their days. I cannot stand when waiters or waitresses do not write down my order then get it wrong. Do they think they are impressing me with their memories? I know their job is tough and they have to deal with many people so write it down. Far worse than that though is when they do not write it down, get it wrong, then protest when I say that it isn’t what I ordered, this sends me on the verge of insanity but I usually just politely say well I may have been mistaken but could you please replace it with what I want anyway. I am a very generous tipper especially when service is good. I think the range of tipping should be far wider. Most people tip 15-20% regardless of service. I am sometimes guilty of this myself, but I would far rather tip between 0 and 40% to truly reward servers who are exemplary  and punish those who ignore, misquote or otherwise marginal me.

Today I had a particularly unlucky day. I was taking the train, and at the station you have to take either an escalator or stairs to and from the platform. On the way outbound i had to go down and the escalator was going up, inbound I had to go up and the escalator was going down making me a very unlucky 0 for 2 on easy rides and 2 for 2 on having to take the stairs.

It is a very common occurrence for people to beg for money in the chat on full tilt. It is a site that prides itself on allowing players to learn, chat and play with the pros so in order to accomplish the chat thing, they have few restrictions on who can chat at what tables. The standard request is for $5 and people will say things as extreme as, “$5 will save my life, could someone PLEASE send it to me”. Most of the time, they will offer something more back when they win by saying something like, “Hey could someone transfer me $5, when I get up to $25 I’ll send you $10 back”. Yesterday I saw the following comment:

hamburgler00 (Observer): Hey guys, I just signed up and Im not sure
about depositing on here yet? Could any of you throw me like 5
dollars so I can try out this site before I decide to put on the minimum
of $50? If I decide to put on $50 I’ll give you your 5 bucks back.

Now, I am in no way offended by the fact that people are begging for gambling money. If anything it makes me happy because we need as many poker players as we can get. However the logic of this request drives me nuts. Aside from the usual reason not to send money to random people (because you have no idea if they are good to their word), even if you take EVERYTHING this beggar says to be the 100%  truth, you still wouldn’t want to take him up on his offer. He really needs to work on the structure of his money requests.

Growing up I drank a ton of Coke and Pepsi. People always told me that no good would come from drinking all that soda. Only on my recent Vegas trip did I learn just how wrong they were.

Poker players have a habit of betting on just about anything from how high they can jump to how many 3 pointers they can make in a row to the gender of the next person to walk around the corner. My friend Luke (http://lukekim.blogspot.com) has been offering action lately on a coke pepsi taste test. His rules are simple, people get an hour to correctly differentiate between 10-20 cups randomly filled by him with either Coke or Pepsi. He first mentioned this bet to me months ago and since I’m not a hustler, I instantly told him that i was pretty sure I could do it. Since then, he did the bet with 5 people and every single one has lost. I was still confident, so upon arriving in Vegas, I booked 1k in action with both him and his friend Andrew at 2 to 1 odds that I could correctly differentiate 10 cups.

Throughout the trip we trash talked back and forth about the upcoming bet, no matter what I said, he responded, “I have heard it all before and the people still lose”. The big night came and I devised a strategy. Luke and Andrew  filled and anonymously labeled 10 cups and sealed the answer key away into an envelope. I had one hour which was more than enough time to taste each cup multiple times.  With the aid of scratch paper, I did the first tasting and wrote down what I suspected each cup was. I was sure that the 2nd cup i tasted was coke, so anytime I drank one that I was unsure about, I went back to that second cup to instantly compare (I called it my litmus coke). I then took a ten minute break and went back and tried each cup again. After the third tasting, I confirmed all my answers and was ready to submit. When I told Luke and Andrew that I had 7 cokes and 3 pepsis Andrew exclaimed, “Crap I think he got it”. It turned out I was the first person to win the Coke-Pepsi challenge, a title about which I am very proud.