Reach for the (Platinum) Stars

Well, my main goal for August is to achieve PlatinumStar VIP status on Pokerstars. The main benefts of which will include generating a lot of FPPs which can be used to buy cash and for tourney buyins, and I will also earn entry into the weekly 30k and monthly 100k freerolls. I will need to put in a lot of hours to get there, however it is achievable now that I am 10-tabling $25 NLO8 instead of 6-tabling.

FullTilt got back to me about the job I applied for in their media and marketing department, asking me to complete an online recruitment test, for which there were 20 questions and a 2-hour time limit. It was split into two parts, the first being poker knowledge and the second being poker media and marketing. The first part was relatively straight forward with most of the questions being multiple choice.

One question was a little strange. It read "Small suited connectors are easier to play out of position than small pocket pairs, true or false?" To be honest both hands can be tough to play out of position, and my initial thought was false because when the blinds are small you can simply check fold small pairs if you dont hit a set, making them easy to play post-flop. However with small suited connectors if you flop a straight or flush draw they can be very hard to play out of position as it is hard to see free cards and hard to semi-bluff. However when the blinds are big, suited connectors are easy to play out of position as they are normally a fold preflop, or if you do call they are hands that you can check fold if you miss or check-raise all-in if you flop a nice draw. Small pairs now become hard to play as it is often hard to know whether or not you are ahead on many flops given the aggressive nature of late tourney poker. I put false in the end but I wonder what other peoples opinions are.

The last question in the poker knowledge section was fruity. It read, "You make the final table of a small mtt. There is one chip leader and everyone else has even stacks. The chip leader makes a standard raise UTG. You have JJ in the hijack. What do you do and why?" Lovely question. I spent about 25 minutes on my answer, and wrote 5 paragraphs, and still wasn't too happy with it. I explored a few different angles given the lack of information in the question, and mainly talked about what I would do with various stack sizes. It was a tough question and i'm not sure why it was in a recuitment test. As Keysie said to me when I told him about it, "What job are you applying for, to be a red pro?"

The second part was a little tougher with all of the questions being creative writing not multiple choice. Questions such as "If you had a $1m budget to spend on advertising FT, how would you spend it?" for which my answer in a nutshell was TV advertising during night-time entertainment shows with adverts specifically focussed on letting people know that they can learn poker and play poker free of charge, in an attempt to recruit new players to the site. There were various other questions about player promotions and online software, which my in-depth poker discussions with my affiliate Jamie in the past probably helped me answer.

I was fairly happy with my answers on the whole, there were no questions that I couldn't answer and I think I put in a fair result. I shall find out if my answers were good enough, and if they can overlook the lack of professional work on my CV sometime next week. Fingers crossed.

Not much else to report, I'll simply be putting in as many hours as possible this month on stars. The Gamblers link has been updated for all you degenerate gamblers out there. And some sad news to end this post is that it now looks very unlikely for the Mitchell Street Masters to be happening this year. Sadly there were problems with the venue, and the sponsors got cold feet once they found out that Phil Ivey was not going to attend, so it will have to wait another year. Sorry to all the MSM fans out there desperate to win a bracelet.

Peace,

Rich xx


Edit: Since writing this blog post, I received the following email from FullTilt:

Hi Richard,

Thanks for completing the Full Tilt Poker online recruitment test. You scored 10/10 in the multiple choice questions and your essay answers were good enough to move you to the next stage in our recruitment process. The Human Resources department of our recruitment consultant company, Pocket Kings Ltd, will contact you to discuss your possible future with us.

Best regards,
Full Tilt Poker

I wonder how many stages of recruitment there are?