Ongoing VP TR, PART 2!

Thanks for the report and sorry for the run bad.

It sounds difficult to actually spend 1300 eating and drinking without bottles for an afternoon.

Any takeaways from your son's guest, the not jaundiced viewpoint.

Thanks, as always, for the TR...sorry about the runbad

LOL your posts always make me think dude. It's like reading Faulkner, I really have to read carefully and decipher every sentence.

Yeah we'll see. My FB host just comped my mom a spa treatment even though she's not staying on property (prob 500$ value total). Haven't gotten a new offer from either place yet, I have to think the next one from FB will be better (and Wynn will be worse since I low played them).

Yes, I agree, so I figure FB cabana one is looking at a 1300$ max spend. If you split that with 4-5 adults that's not bad at all. Even better when comped.

My son's friend was blown away. I hope I can start running better so this TR can keep going.

Always appreciate the time you spend to write these up.

And big respect for doing them even when you run bad

as do i when your ux decisions are involved
look forward to future positive updates, thanks again for the blog

Random fact about your sentence above. One of my favorite college professors (Joseph Blotner) was William Faulkner's official biographer. The biography was, I believe, a massive two-volume edition somewhere in excess of 2,000 pages. When all was said and done, Blotner wrote a dozen books about Faulkner.

What could be more fitting?

LOL!

I get it. When you hit you think it's just printing money. When you miss over and over you wonder if the machine is rigged.

I'm currently really having a hard time choosing what game I'm going to play the next time I go for many reasons. The lightning strike potential of UX has saved so many of my trips and can make even the most mediocre of hands a source of potential huge fun. But the game is so swingy and you can "only" play 10 lines... so frustrating to miss over and over.

OTOH, you almost can't win at multiline regular VP unless you're dealt monsters. And I've had plenty of sessions drawing at aces etc 50-60 lines and getting absolutely nothing which is almost more infuriating. Hell I've even been blanked drawing 1 to a royal or 4 AWAK 100 lines multiple times in my life.

Being stuck and having given back almost all of my sun run of course is making me sour on the game, but I legitimately have less fun playing VP these days. Nothing sounds very appealing and it's more just "how do I want to hurt myself today?". In my current frame of mind I think I'm back to playing UX- at least the potential for fun is there beyond just being dealt a royal or 4AWAK. I may have mentioned this earlier but my buddy D and I were talking about the difference in fun with craps vs VP- with craps, when the roll gets good you're looking at at least 10-15 min of sustained fun. The net win may be far less than VP, but even the monsters in VP are really only amazing measured over seconds- then, it's on to the next hand (at least for me). So from a long term fun perspective, craps is clearly the move (esp given we go bust eventually in any game and I need a bankroll 10-50x for VP what I need for craps).

I dunno. Mostly I'm happy I'm still able to gamble and I have far less love for VP than I used to- that's a good thing.

I have no idea how craps works. I have only played it once at a live table, outside Vegas, for a few hundred. It was fun but I don’t know the strategy of it.

I did play a couple of sessions of bubble craps, including an incredible sun run where I ran $200 up to $1400 but I’m just pressing buttons. No strategy, just play the come and when a point is made I place on all numbers and press every roll until I seven out - more or less. Plus I played the ATS and landed the tall on $15 bet. I feel like learning craps properly might be the next dangerous move.

I get what you mean with UX, it’s volatile to a point where it’s almost not even fun anymore.

I think I’ll just stick to my main game which is blackjack next trips. I’ve run a couple of hundred dollars up to 4-5000 over the past couple of trips and it’s a lot of fun when it goes good.

son
the run
forget it
promise it will never happen again in a similar way

Hey Leon - how do you see the new tax nonsense effecting you going forward? Gonna blow it out in 2025 then ride off into the sunset?

At first I thought Leon is usually a big winner so it won't matter much. And I am usually a big loser so it won't matter much. But after seeing what Grok had to say, I hope the House modifies or rejects it.

OBBBA Gambling Tax Provisions Summary

Current Law
Deduct 100% of gambling losses up to winnings (Schedule A for non-professionals, Schedule C for professionals).
No tax on net losses or break-even scenarios.

OBBBA (Senate Version)
Caps deductible losses at 90% of winnings, creating taxable "phantom" income (10% of winnings) even if breaking even or losing.

Scenarios (20% Tax Rate)
Net $100,000 Win (Wins $1.1M, Loses $1M)
Current: Tax on $100,000 = $20,000.
OBBBA: Deduct $990,000 (90% of $1.1M), taxable income $110,000, tax = $22,000.

Break Even (Wins $1M, Loses $1M)
Current: Tax = $0.
OBBBA: Deduct $900,000 (90% of $1M), taxable income $100,000, tax = $20,000.

Net $100,000 Loss (Wins $900,000, Loses $1M)
Current: Tax = $0.
OBBBA: Deduct $810,000 (90% of $900,000), taxable income $90,000, tax = $18,000.

Notes
Applies to both professional and non-professional gamblers.
House version may eliminate the cap during reconciliation.
Industry opposition (e.g., AGA, Rep. Titus) may lead to changes.

W2G income already leads to increased MAGI that potentially increase taxes and IRMAA. Why so much gov focus to discourage responsible degenerate gambling?

Feels like it was tacked on without any oversight. There’s no way all these senators propped up in part by casino money would want to discourage gambling. It would be a huge blow to brick and mortar casinos everywhere. Never underestimate how dumb politicians are

Not about discouraging degens as it is “we have to find the money somewhere and all these gamblers clearly have money otherwise they wouldn’t be placing massive bets so let’s turn up the rake on these clowns so our billionaire buddies who fund our election campaigns can have a tax cut” kind of thing.

Big winners get killed as does anyone who plays big volume. Only people who it doesn’t matter for are big losers for the year. Hopefully some industry lobby money and common sense prevail.

The idea that gambling taxes aren’t just “list your net winnings for the year under income” with additional provisos for expenses for pros is absolutely mind melting. And of course is how the majority of people who even bother claiming things do it anyway.

Yeah big volume can kill someone like Leon. Unless I interpret this wrong.
For someone like me where I have had a few years with 20k in jackpots from VP /slots I would claim my 20k in losses and owe basically nothing. Under new law I would have to pay taxes on 2k of that, not ideal but not awful.

Someone like Leon, say he has 500k in hand pays and can only negate 450k of it against losses now Leon needs to pay taxes on 50k more income I think.

There's not even a question here- if this becomes the law of the land, no one with a clue should ever play on a machine that can generate a reportable tax event, ever. I will quit VP automatically and probably go to craps (the table games reporting is "fast and loose", shall we say).

Higher volume gamblers suffer more, of course, but at the end of the day winners AND losers are going to get drilled. Taxing what ultimately will be a net loss for 99% of all gamblers is beyond stupid.

And just to put some context in the numbers, my AGI the last decade has been in the millions, the vast majority from gambling. 5-10 MILLION in reported jackpots every year. So I'm supposed to pay tax on an additional 500k-1 million, EVEN if I lose? That's why it's a non-starter for me. No "gamble less". I'll just be done.

I think we've seen where this thread actually could go to die...

I'm surprised the gambling industry doesn't have the power to get this out. Or this was snuck in. Lots of casinos stand to lose a lot

I could still play single line quarters, but I won't be able to increase the bet at all, or any kind of multi-line. Just terrible. I know Leon would die of boredom.

I'd follow a craps TR thread. But don't know how able you are to take pics. I'd imagine your craps action would pale to your VP action, in the eyes of the casino?

I'd've thought the same re: craps TRs until I stumbled across that guy's youtube channel where he videos sessions at El Cortez. I didn't think any casino would allow that

Yep, VP and slot players really feel the brunt of this with the auto hand pays and never adjusted W2G limit while sports bets or table gamers can pick > 1200$ of chips off the table and no one blinks an eye. Sad thing is that many VP players won't find out about this until their 2026 taxes are done in 2027.

It could be worse. They could decide that the aggregate win/loss amount actually contains many small gains - eg 3 of a kind- that added up further reduce the deductible amount.

This.

Legislation that will likely hurt casinos' bottom lines even worse than gamblers' in a couple of years. Well thought out legislation!

they are applauding it - wouldn't surprise me at all if they were the ones who wrote the language to get winning sports bettors and advantage players to self ban

of the people who play the kind of volume leon does on those machines, he's probably a rarity in that he'd either understand the consequences and/or care enough about them enough to stop

Seems short-sighted to me. I guess time will tell.