KJ, How Did Your Year Go

[Midwest Player]

KJ, just in case you missed this on Norm's site I will re-post it here. I think you mentioned somewhere that you took unemployment comp for several months when the Las Vegas casinos were shut down.

Here is something that might affect your 2020 taxes. Looks like I'm good, but some gamblers who file as a business and took unemployment compensation in 2020 will be affected. I'm thinking of KJ here and I'm sure there are many others.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/15/success/2020-taxes-stimulus-rescue-plan/index.html

 

[KewlJ]

Thanks MWP. My taxes are already done and filed. I trust my tax guy knows what he is doing. Most of his clients are professional or semi-professional players (that probably only happens in Las Vegas). Filed super early, so that my 2020 earnings would be what determined this current stimulus check. I will say that I made 24k as an AP in 2020. My worst year by far since I have been in Las Vegas, 12 years now and I have to go back to my year 3 of playing for a living for a worse year and I was playing $10/$15 minimums back then. I was a brutal year for so many. 10 weeks of unemployment, 2 stimulus checks and maybe another tomorrow helped ease the financial "pain" though.

Still have yet to really get started for 2021 yet. A little bit of machine play / free play, but not a single hand of blackjack yet. I get my first shot of vaccine tomorrow, so will go from there. 2021 will begin sometime in April....hopefully.

 

[King777]

Thanks MWP. My taxes are already done and filed. I trust my tax guy knows what he is doing. Most of his clients are professional or semi-professional players (that probably only happens in Las Vegas). Filed super early, so that my 2020 earnings would be what determined this current stimulus check. I will say that I made 24k as an AP in 2020. My worst year by far since I have been in Las Vegas, 12 years now and I have to go back to my year 3 of playing for a living for a worse year and I was playing $10/$15 minimums back then. I was a brutal year for so many. 10 weeks of unemployment, 2 stimulus checks and maybe another tomorrow helped ease the financial "pain" though.

Still have yet to really get started for 2021 yet. A little bit of machine play / free play, but not a single hand of blackjack yet. I get my first shot of vaccine tomorrow, so will go from there. 2021 will begin sometime in April....hopefully.

How are you able to get machine free plays since you mostly play unrated on blackjack with short sessions right?

 

[King777]

i got back into blackjack as a profitable side hobby but i've been a poker pro for over a decade
this year i've only gotten in about 400 hours (mostly jan and feb) in poker. i'm up about 34k. 22k of that was one session. coming off of back to back -8,000 dollar days. variance really is a crazy thing in gambling. i was looking over my poker records and in the last 5,000 hours i have about three 500 hour break even streaks. I also had a 500 hour streak where i made 220k. playing essentially the same stakes. i'm actually on a weird downswing now of about 10k in poker, with 6,000 of it coming just before covid and 4,000 since i started playing again (started -9.000 right out of the gate)

Blackjack wise my max bet in a shoe game is 400-450 , and in some places 2 hands of 300.
My max in double deck has been 300.
Most i've won or loss in one double deck shoe is about 2800 and most in a shoe game is about 4,000.

How are you able to max bet 300 in double deck? I've been backed off very quickly in as little as 25-200 spread

 

[KewlJ]

How are you able to get machine free plays since you mostly play unrated on blackjack with short sessions right?

I do or did some machine play separately that I do/did play rated.