4.2. Re: GVR $1,$2,$5 NSU Deuces MultiStrike (100.02% with the 0.1% cashb
Posted by: "Bob Dancer" bdancer@compdance.com bobdancer02
Date: Tue Mar 4, 2008 12:20 am ((PST))Some players give their net W2Gs as their score. If that is what xxxent
was doing, it's not a big trick to average $500K a year as it's only a
statement of how big you played, not on how much you won. (I'm an annual
multi-millionaire keeping score on that basis --- but I certainly don't
consider that a legitimate way) The score that counts IMO is your "net"
score --- which means wins minus losses. Even here, though, there's a
HUGE difference in the way players keep score.
This part of Mr. Dancer's post is most certainly true -- I was playing next to a gentleman who was playing a neg. EV game of $2 10-play and got a dealt jackpot for $80,000. I congratulated him, and commented that "the IRS is going to love you this year" to which he responded that he usually has $2 million in W2Gs each year. And I expect he was probably usually a losing player, just a high roller - although I certainly wasn't watching his play closely enough to know if he knew what he was doing.
By the same way of reporting losses and gains, I've lost hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds over the years -- unfortunately pretty much offset by roughly the same amount of gain 
And of course, the "net" for someone who files as a professional gambler can actually be reduced beyond what the rest of us might consider it, as they may deduct (as I understand it) many of their indirect expenses such as travel and hotels for "going to work".
Incidentally, just out of curiosity, how does one play a $100 3-play machine, for example? It seems like you would be spending an awful lot of your time feeding in the cash, unless the $100 machines have better functioning bill acceptors than the $1 and $5 ones do -- and just that alone could slow you down to FAR less than top speed, perhaps from 600-800 hands an hour to a fraction of that! Or is there a way (and do they offer the service) of taking a stack of money from you and loading the machines with a couple hundred "coins".
I have heard that some high rollers are assigned staff to take down their hand pays and remove the delay of waiting for the W2Gs, so they can keep on playing in between the inevitably frequent "jackpots" of $1200 or more, which can obviously occur on as little as trips ($1500) on a $100 5-coin single play.
Personally, my highest play was a $25 machine, VERY long ago (and just for a short period of time), and my biggest current plays are $5 single line or $2 3-play, with most of my time at the $1 machines (and thinking about dropping down to $0.25 multi-play when available, to reduce volatility AND eliminate most W2Gs).
--BG
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