I agree it's a tricky issue. If you can build a good story around why you did it and convince them why you want the MBA and what you are going to do with it, you may have a shot. Certainly your qualifications are good otherwise. The trick with Work experience is bringing something to the table that will be of value for your classmates, so you will need to emphasize your 4 yeras as an engineer and then also speak to the lessons learned from poker. It's unlikely you will win any points on maturity or leadership from that experience, but from an innovation standpoint, and creativity you could probably argue some development took place. Also, poker is a very individual sport, so you should speak to how you can work in teams. Poker players are notorious for being loners and this is not a good thing for b-school since it's mostly team work. If you had some success playing poker that would be worth mentioning as well as the defining moment when you realized you needed to get a real job. One thing you want to be sure NOT to do is to make it look like you are looking to the MBA as a way to control-alt-delete a dead end career. SChools like to bring in ambitious, visionary, collaborative leaders, so you will need to convince them you fit this mold despite your hedonistic side journey down the road to gambling iniquity
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