Bloomberg Brief reports that Verition Group’s Ken Lin and Jeffrey Zhou won the inaugural “Class of the Hedge Fund Titans” ping pong tournament (which benefited the Robin Hood foundation), held at SPiN April 13, besting players from a field that included Louis Capital Management, Eton Park, Candlewood Investment Group, Greenlight Capital, LuxEn Capital, Whitebox Advisors, Samlyn Capital, Bharat Capital LLC, Dymaxion Capital, Tiger Global, York Capital and SAC. Which brings to a little story about heart.

When one is employed by a certain hedge fund in Stamford, Connecticut, one is aware that losing is not tolerated. When it comes to anything. Losing is not tolerated when it comes to money. Losing is not tolerated when it comes to thumb wrestling. Losing is not tolerated when it comes to Iron Chef competitions. And losing is certainly not tolerated when it comes to the trio of sports this hedge fund takes most seriously, which are badminton, hand ball and ping pong.

As any pageant mom worth her salt knows, practice makes perfect. With the pong season just getting under way in February, early mornings and late nights at this hedge fund were being devoted, for the past several months, to skills and conditioning. The opportunity to take part in a small tournament came up, and it was of course jumped on. Despite the competition not exactly being formidable, the event was to be taken seriously. From a field of 100 players, the top 2 were selected and told they’d be representing the firm, and from there the real work took place.

I’m sure a lot of you here think you know what it’s like to train hard for an athletic event- you have no idea. By 4AM every day, Player Lawrence and Player Larry were expected to be dressed and on their morning jog from 72 Cummings Point Road to Coach Steve’s favorite coffee cart on Madison, where they’d pick up his order and head back to Connecticut (still on foot). Every second they showed up late and every degree of heat lost from the cups meant 5 minutes of wall squats. Weekday skills sessions involved being double and triple teamed by members of the US Olympic squad, while Saturday morning practices at Casa de Coach provided much needed respite from the grueling prior five days. After protein shakes and raw eggs, they were given skates and told to head out back to the rink.

Once there, the table Lawrence and Larry were to volley on was tied to the back of a Zamboni, on which Coach sat atop. “Begin,” he would tell them, starting off slow. Then, progressively the table would start to move faster. Lawrence and Larry would get a good rhythm going and it’d jerk left. Then right. Breaks would be slammed, figure-eights traced. Later in the locker room, if coach wasn’t pleased with what he’d seen out there- and he never was- he’d yell, “You think this is tough you no talent shits? I’ll show you tough,” and then project childhood home videos of him taking 3rd place in the 8 and under 25m butterfly.

April 10. Three days before the tournament. Lawrence and Larry had spent the day doing an agility and footwork exercise (getting shot at while box-stepping) and were being fitted for their uniforms. Coach walked into the room. “Get out,” he told the tailor.

Coach held up a paddle with Lawrence and Larry stood there in their half-sewn shorts, not sure what was going to happen next.

“You see this,” Coach asked, an eery calm to his voice. “You see this? You two aren’t good enough to have this thing shoved up your asses, handle side out.”

“But Coach,” Larry stuttered.

“Are you coming off to me?” Coach bellowed, as he lunged for the projection machine he wheeled behind him at all times during the season.

“No Papa!” Lawrence and Larry cried in unison. “Not the swim tapes!”

“You’re idiots, go home” Coach yelled. “I am doing what I should have done months ago and bringing in some ringers from our Asian desk.”

Lawrence and Larry knew being taken out of the game would be a death sentence for them at the firm. “Please don’t,” they whimpered. “We want to do this, we know we can make you proud.”

And against his better judgement, coach believed them.

April 13. The night of the tournament at Susan Sarandon’s clubhouse, SPiN. Lawrence and Larry handely won the first two rounds of play. Round three: you don’t even want to know. They get blown out, bad, each point getting worse than the next. Coach can’t even call a time out, as he’s seeing red. Everything is moving in slow motion and then finally it’s over.

The buzzer goes off and the winning team’s family rushes over to their side of the table. Lawrence and Larry see coach approaching and get that terrible sinking feeling in their stomachs, so are more than a little shocked to be greeted bya a simple “Let’s head home.”

The trio walk out to the parking lot in silence, which was much more pleasant than what Lawrence and Larry had anticipated just moments earlier. In fact, Coach even carried their paddles for them. And so, figuring everything was cool, Larry asked, “Hey, can we stop at Baskin Robbin’s on the way home?” He knew Coach loved 31 flavors and since he seemed to be in okay spirits, assumed he’d get a yes. What he did not expect, was the response.

Flipping both paddles into either hand, Coach approached Larry’s car. Thanks to cameras in the parking lot, we know that this is what happened next.

Selection for the 2012 reps begins Saturday, 15 minutes before sunrise.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

[...]

Greenlight Capital Q1 Letter [PDF]

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Level E Capital founder Sonia Schulenburg, pictured, want to put your money to work.

The details:

* Level E Capital is looking for investors for its Maya Fund

* The fund’s trades are made by a robot, who’s yet to be named (first investor to pledge a billion could ask for the right)

Maya, whose server is kept in a two-meter-tall air-cooled cabinet, uses so-called artificial intelligence to process data and, unlike other mathematics-based funds, adjusts to changing market conditions “on the fly,” she said. The fund makes as many as 1,000 trades a day, mainly in FTSE 100 companies and those in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

* This fund is different

“This is definitely different because it’s dynamic,” Michael MacPhee, a partner at Baillie Gifford, which invested $15 million last year with Schulenburg, said at his Edinburgh office. “Most quant funds are pennies in front of a steamroller. This thing actually adapts, it’s intelligent.”

* Schulenberg holds a doctorate in artificial intelligence and an associates degree in flexing

Schulenburg also competed in natural, or non drug-enhanced, bodybuilding events. She placed third in the U.K. championships for her weight in 1998 and 2000. She also was a Scottish champion, according to Guy Addison, who runs the Body Academy in Perth. Schulenburg no longer competes, though she said she trains sporadically.

* If “I’m on top of the world/I’m in a glass case of emotion” returns are you thing, this fund is not for you

“We don’t offer that roller-coaster performance,” Schulenburg said. “When people are celebrating, we don’t, and when people are crying and committing suicide, we don’t.”

Bodybuilding Mexican Academic Woos Edinburgh With ‘Robot’ Fund [Bloombeg]

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Bloomberg Brief recently caught up with Nixon speechwriter, actor and Clear Eyes shill Ben Stein to pick his brain on the state of the hedge fund industry. Stein’s thoughts? Investors are getting robbed on management/performance fees and the only way a hedge fund can beat the market is via insider trading which Stein wants no part of in case anyone was wondering.

“This has been an absolutely monumental recent period for event-driven arbitrage, so that’s what I love,” Ben Stein said in an interview. He dislikes currency hedge funds because the strategy is “too treacherous.” “I don’t have any confidence that the people I’d be working with can outperform any kind of index of it,” he said…Retail investors should invest in exchange-traded funds or mutual funds that replicate hedge fund returns, Stein said, because they charge lower fees and have better returns.

“These simulacra of hedge funds are going to completely change that world,” he said. “that is the wave of the future. If you’re getting the same results as you get if you’re paying 2 and 20, why not go with the $5,000 minimum investment and the fee of $100?” The federal government’s insider trading investigation is also another reason to avoid investing in traditional hedge funds, he said. “Financial theory tells you that you cannot beat the large indexes unless you are getting inside information, and I don’t want to be part of anything that involves inside information.”

Related: Ben Stein: Merrill Lynch Is An Astonishingly Well-Run Company

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Sometimes name recognition alone isn’t enough to attract lots of money. Zoe Cruz’s start-up hedge fund, Voras Capital Management, which bets on broad economic trends, began trading in mid-2010 but has struggled to get much past the $220 million mark, say people familiar with the firm. Another challenge for Ms. Cruz, these people say, is that in the wake the financial crisis investors have been favoring funds run by traders with recent track records over those run by executives. Still, Ms. Cruz, who is actively trading in her hedge fund, is being closely followed by investors and could raise more money, these people say. Ms. Cruz says she sees a big opportunity. “People aren’t going to give me $3 billion just because I’m Zoe Cruz,” she says. “That’s a positive thing.” [WSJ via Heidi Moore, earlier]

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Third Point First Quarter Letter 2011 [PDF]

Earlier: Dear Third Point Investors

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March performance.

Renaissance Institutional Futures Fund LP (Series A):
March 2010: -0.39%
YTD: -0.39%

Tudor Tensor:
March 2010: -6.95%
YTD: -3.24%

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It also appears as though investors have added about $1 billion since January.

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Almost exactly a year ago, if you happened to be walking down East 67th Street toward Fifth Avenue, you probably stopped to peer through the window of a certain $49 million townhouse. Specifically the one belonging to Phil Falcone. There, a piano playing pig name Wilbur was pulling out all the stops (“Memories” from Cats, his infamous Bette Midler), in celebration of his boss making AR Magazine‘s annual list of the 25 highest paid managers, having taken home $825 million in 2009. The good spirits and the gin were running high that night and the party didn’t stop ’til the early hours of the morning. This year, things will be different. The lights will be dimmed and Wilbur will be in his room, digging out the cocktail napkin with the number of the hedge fund manager he’d met last summer in Connecticut. He told himself he wasn’t going to do anything with it but…things have changed.

This year, Phil didn’t even crack the top 25, let alone the top ten. Here are the guys whose paychecks ranked them among the best in 2009, and whose 2010 comp may mean household staff looking for greener pastures in the coming weeks:

* John Arnold (Centaurus Energy)
* Phil Falcone (Harbinger Capital Partners)
* Louis Bacon (Moore Capital)
* Andreas Halvorsen (Viking Capital)
* Alan Howard (Brevan Howard)
* O. Francis Biondi Jr./Brian J. Higgins (King Street Capital)

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Subject: Very Short Notice Email about an interesting opportunity!! Please read at your earliest!
Importance: High

I am looking for any suggestions or offers for a donation of a one week (5 day) internship at a hedge fund, fof or other key investment firm…for a very, very meaningful awards dinner mentioned below. FYI, the audience will be FBI, other law enforcement persons, politicians and business leaders.

Anyone who does participate will have their donation posted on www.charitybuzz.com – and will have exposure in the auction booklets as well…(but you have to let Danielle know as soon as possible to have the wide exposure that Charitybuzz could offer. You can opt to keep your fund’s name private.

Please feel free to forward this request on to anyone who you think may be interested in donating…

New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers Association
20th Annual Awards and Recognition Dinner
Date: April 9, 2011
The Graycliff
122 Moonachie Ave
Moonachie, NJ 07074
5:30 p.m. – 12 a.m.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker