FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#728 – The Day it Pays to Lose

Posted by Editor | Filed under Uncategorized

I received a panicked phone call from my accountant today, exactly what you don’t want to receive on April 15. In fact, because I usually don’t get around to taking care of my taxes until the fall, April 15 simply doesn’t register as a notable date. In most years, I’m as clueless as a truant wondering why all the school kids are getting excited in June.

But I did my taxes early – well, on time, which for me is very early – this year, thanks in part of my assistant Shauna, who I am trying to get Full Tilt to hire for the World Series. For the first time in a decade, I experienced the smugness of a person free from tax anxiety.

I even got to enjoy the plight of Those Wretched Souls whose company I used to keep. A top online poker player instant-messaged me asking if it was too late to set up an offshore-holding company to shield his online profits from the government. “And do you know how any of that works?”

Yeah, I had a good laugh at that. Until my accountant called with an ominous pair of questions: “First, did you happen to send the government any tax deposits in addition to the ones you told me about? Second, can you scare up $12,000 to send to the U.S. Treasury by the end of the day?”

I answered both questions the same way: “@#$%$#^$#@^$*!!!” (Roughly translated, that means, “I thought finally doing my taxes on time exempted me from getting the shit scared out of me.”)

It seemed despite my careful accounting and description of my online poker wins from 2008, I had significantly underwithheld. “Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought I had this figured out pretty well. In calculating my gambling gains for the year, don’t you reduce them by my gambling losses, both live and online?”

“Of course.”

“Then what about the awful World Series I had last year? One cash in twenty events? Bubbling the HORSE? John Juanda getting lucky against me? The hold ‘em event where the guy took an eternity to call my A-Q all-in with his A-2, after saying, ‘I know this is a mistake but I have a hunch …’ and then hitting a deuce?”

Thank goodness for both of us that he stopped me with a groan of recognition. Otherwise, I was prepared to describe every bad beat and near miss from 10 1/2 months ago. After offering repeated apologies, he told me what a good break I caught by having such a deadful World Series last year; he simply missed the description when first reviewing my tax materials.

With a quick good bye, he hung up to (start and then) put out another fire.

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