Tax Time: Are you a professional gambler?

[Niediam]

I believe however that a professional is allowed to offset his losses from his wins without having to itemize his deductions.

[MicroBob]

Stanford Wong has done some 'slot-whoring' or something to that effect.
It's only on specific machines though.

I guess there was a slot where some special kind of result moved a little race-car up a track or something. These hits didn't come by very often so it wouldn't be unusual for people to leave the machine after a few hours with the race-car only 1/4 of the way there or something.
Stanford somehow calculated that if you found a machine where the car was half-way or 3/4 (or whatever precise figure it was)then it would be +EV to sit down and play until you got the race-car JP whatever-it-was.
Something like that anyway...I'm sure I screwed up some of the monir details.

Evidently there have been a couple of other slot-machine formats that have been 'whoreable' or +EV at certani points...as well as the obvious situations where the jackpot is significantly higher than the EV you can estimate from how frequently it has paid in the past.

I suspect that these opportunities are fewer and fewer though.



The lady in the article was officially an idiot (trying to deduct her gambling losses against her 'regular' income by saying "well...I play a lot...so I'm a pro).

[Lottery Larry]

I wouldn't bet on that one. I'd bet the IRS is looking for itemization from gamblers more than MOST groups.

[Lottery Larry]

I thought I'd read somewhere that, in order to deduct some expenses- similar to a business- that weren't win/loss related, you had to be labeled officially as a professional gambler.

In that, a majority of your income came from gambling AND you had to be doing this for 3 out of 5 years, before you could start treating it somewhat like a business.

Anyone know?

[CORed]

I don't think the grocery store slot machines in Nevada are owned by the state. I believe that they are privately owned. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they have lousy payouts.

[Lottery Larry]

"I've heard that most lotteries are only paying out something like 20-40 cents for every dollar wagered. "

Lotteries? Most state laws I've seen (such as in PA) mandate around 45-53% of payouts for the big lottery pools. I don't know about scratch tickets.

Or are you talking about some type of slot machine?