4. Obsessive record keeping - methods
Date: Thu May 3, 2007 10:52 am ((PDT))I'm curious as to what methods some of you to track the totality of your
gambling activity - offers, play sessions, giveaways, promotions, etc.
Personally, I carry 3x5 cards with me and record my activity. Information includes date, casino, time start at each machine, time stop at each machine, game played, and net profit / loss for that session. Session can be 5 minutes up to hours, of course, depending on how it goes. My friend who is a tax accountant and player adds to this the casino's machine number.
I similarly log non-slot play, such as live poker.
Example: 4/29/07, xx casino, 9:30am to 10:45am, $1 Jacks or Better 3-play, -$400.
4/29/07, xx casino, 10:50am to 3pm, $1/2 no limit holdem, +$400
4/39/07, xx casino, 3pm to 5pm, $5 min. blackjack, +$100
Not a real sample, except for the part where I almost always lose at VP 
Personally, at the end of each day I put my net results, eg above it would be +$100 - but that is NOT a sufficient record in itself, just as I don't think it would be sufficient to just count your money at the beginning and end of a trip!
My friend would add the machine number; I never bother with that. If I get a hand-pay jackpot, I make a note of that (eg, "includes $4000 RF), so that my diary coincides with my W2Gs.
Personally, I give my accountant a summary of these 3x5s by transferring them to a simple Word document that looks just like above, and letting them figure out what to do with it. I include my W2Gs and my win/loss statements from the casinos as additional documentation for the accountant, who only turns in the appropriate tax form and the W2Gs with the return.
If my 3x5s were easier for a stranger to read, I could just copy them for the accountant and let him do all the math; that's what I'm paying him for (I hate doing taxes, and turn in my records organized by category, eg, donations, income, gambling, etc., but I never complete the tax organizer that the accountant sends me each year; just not my style of record-keeping for gambling or anything else).
This low-tech record-keeping appears to be sufficient data for tax purposes, although I haven't been audited yet (maybe that's why?). It alone does not give me much bottom-line data, except to the extent that I do the manual calculations of net per-day or per-trip at the bottom of a card or series of cards.
I used to transfer the results to a small bound book, but don't bother anymore.
I think the fact that these are clearly my "contemporary" records would make them hold up in an audit; I keep these for quite a while (I think six years is the limit for an audit, but I don't wean my stack of cards that often even).
The accountant HAS provided me with a spreadsheet to enter this data, but I haven't taken the time to do it yet; if he set it up as I asked (I'm not spreadsheet-savvy), it should tell me my results for each game I differentiate when I enter, including results on a per-hour basis.
e.g., I could choose to put all VP as one game in the spreadsheet, or separate out by denomination, multi-/single-line, and whatever other distinctions I'd like to make.
--BG
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