So what poker software would you like to see?

[WordWhiz]

Well, this is something pretty simple, but I'd like to see it. A poker-site activity tracker, like what PokerPulse used to have, that charts how many people are on at any given time. Most of the major sites make this info available, so you'd just have to write a quick app to capture that piece of data, say, every 15 minutes for a week, and then graph it. It would be especially nice for smaller sites to see what times of day are best to log on if you want a decent game selection.

[numeri]

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*sigh*

Here we go again.

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I was talking about Canadian law. Its the first time I talk about taxes on the internet with strangers.

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Ah. I have no idea about Canadian law - you may be right.

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And it seems you agree with my post?

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Not in the U.S. You get taxed on your winnings, not your net gain.

[Nomad84]

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make a financial program (preferably one that works with PT), that can also keep track of other things like live play, bonuses, rakeback, and poker related expenses.

i've got taxes on the brain.

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This is a great idea. Something that could plot your PT sessions in such a way that you could easily see them and manually link them into taxable "session" when the times overlap woule be nice too. I guess you could even set up a rules based automated function to do this too, but you'd want to individual users to define the rules themselves, I'd think, since there is no official ruling on what a session is in the IRS's eyes (at least I think there's no rule). Perhaps a chart that showed each session as a horizontal bar and stacked multiple sessions at the same time. Maybe even color code the sessions for game type and stakes. I could then link all overlapping sessions into a single tax session and get a reading of my overall gross wins and gross losses.

That much should be relatively simple, but the even better part would be including bonuses and rakeback, as mentioned by tiltaholic. In theory I could input a rakeback percentage for each site and have this software automatically query the PT database and determine how much rakeback I earned during this session. Also, I could input how much bonus I am clearing and at what rate. If I begin a session with 0 raked hands, this software could query the database to determine how many raked hands I played during the session. If I played 350 raked hands towards a $100 7x bonus, then I just earned $50 in bonus during that session. The software should then realize during my next session that I still have $50 in bonus remaining to clear at 7x.

I think it's easily justifiable to add rakeback and bonus earned during a specific session to my session results, since the money was earned during that specific playing period. Doing so results in a lower tax liability since part of the bonus/rakeback profit is absorbed by losing sessions. Consider a +$100 session, a -$100 session, and $40 in bonus. Adding them separately would result in +$140 and -$100, so you'd pay taxes on the $140. If the $40 was considered in each session, you'd have +$120 and -$80, and would pay taxes on $120.

Others may feel that this treatment of rakeback and bonuses is not valid, and I'd like to hear their arguments because I know relatively little about taxes. However, it seems that if I earn the money during this session, as a direct result of playing the hands, then it is part of my session earnings. If others agree with me, then this software would be invaluable for simplifying the reporting of taxes, especially if you include a provision for manually entering live results, casino bonus results, and related expenses.

Thanks for the suggestion tiltaholic! I like it!

[edit]This has the advantage of not having to interface with any poker sites too, so no T&C concerns. Also, if you made this, it might be wise to make the PT parts of it optional so that if someone wanted to use it purely for manually entering session, then that would be OK too. However, the PT part would obviously be the big selling point. If you do this, it would be great to be able to plot sessions from a variety of databases at once since I play on more than one site sometimes, but import each site's results into it's own database. I would definitely buy this software, but it would be ideal if a working version were available before the end of the year so that I could have completely accurate records for the entire year for 2006 tax reporting purposes.[/edit]

[MrWookie47]

I think the tax program you speak of already exists.

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I would really love to see a $$->BB-Converter-HUD-Thingy. I sometimes fail to count the bets going in because I play on another table etc. and then I have to do unnecessary arithmetics. I know dividing by 2 isn't much of a challenge, but it's unnerving if you are trying to think about so many other things at the same time. In addition to that, I would love an overlay, that displays each players stack in BB instead of $$. It would also help me a lot not to tilt.

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That would be really great

[Nomad84]

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I think the tax program you speak of already exists.

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Thanks for the link, but I have no idea how to use that. In addition, I suggested a feature that would allow you to link concurrently played PT sessions into a single taxable session for players who feel that it is allowable based on the way the IRS sets the rules. I also mentioned the ability to accurately track rakeback, bonuses, casino play, live poker play, and expenses.

For live sessions, you could even set up a feature to add different cardrooms information to the software so that I could choose from a dropdown menu which room I played at. If the mileage to each is known, as well as the cost per mile to operate your vehicle, then it could automatically calculate my expenses for getting to and from the casino. I assume that is deductable for pros, at least, but I'm not sure.

[tiltaholic]

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I think the tax program you speak of already exists.

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heh.

i'm being selfish, but i want something better and more inclusive. and i don't know how to do that perl script business.

[gharp]

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*sigh*

Here we go again. You are taxed on your winnings, not your net gain. In your federal taxes, you can claim your losses as itemized deductions. In certain states, (like IL - my current state of residence) itemized deductions do not exist. In that case, you get taxed on your winnings only and just have to suck up your losses.

So yes, if you win 100k and lose 100k, it seems like you break even. According to the IRS, though, you owe a shitload of money.


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I think this part isn't right -- your state may claim you owe that shitload, but the IRS lets you itemize the losses. They're really only interested in the net gain (this document seems surprisingly clear to me).

[Nomad84]

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*sigh*

Here we go again. You are taxed on your winnings, not your net gain. In your federal taxes, you can claim your losses as itemized deductions. In certain states, (like IL - my current state of residence) itemized deductions do not exist. In that case, you get taxed on your winnings only and just have to suck up your losses.

So yes, if you win 100k and lose 100k, it seems like you break even. According to the IRS, though, you owe a shitload of money.


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I think this part isn't right -- your state may claim you owe that shitload, but the IRS lets you itemize the losses. They're really only interested in the net gain (this document seems surprisingly clear to me).

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Part of the problem is that 100K in wins will probably put you in a different tax bracket, so even if you can deduct the 100k in losses, you will still owe more than you would if you'd never played. You will also lose the ability to make several other deductions (I can't say which since I don't know much about taxes) that are based on income. You will lose your standard deduction, if you were planning on taking it. Even if you break even, if you have a large amount of gross wins, you're still going to get screwed on taxes.

[Greg J]

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Obviously only software that do not break the T&C of the major sites would be of long term value...

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Crap! The software I would like to see most would be one that took information from the tables and imported them into an alternate user interface. This interface would be completely customizable -- you would no longer have to play on crappy Prima or Crypto or Crapoker.com software, but one software that looked however you wanted it to look.

I pressed this idea to both Josh (creator of PA) and the software forum. It seems this idea does violate the T&Cs of just about every poker site. The one way they mentioned around this was to get permission to do it from each site. They are not optimistic about this prospect.