DON'T GAMBLE WITH THE IRS Gambling Is My Business was written for men and women who are, or want to be, professional gamblers. It will show you how to track gambling income, explains what gamblers can and cannot deduct, and teaches you how to document gambling activities in a manner that will survive an IRS audit. A couple of winning pots taken home from card games with friends, or casual evenings at the casino, does not make you a professional gambler. A professional gambler is operating a business, not just out to win a game or two. And, in an audit, the professional gambler will most likely be asked to prove that their gambling activities qualify as a business. Tracking wins, losses, and expenses on gambling is the same whether you're reporting hobby or business income. It must be done according to IRS rules if you expect to survive a tax audit, and both professional and hobby gamblers will benefit from using this organizer to keep proper records. Maintain this organizer regularly and you should be done in less than 20 minutes each month, and when tax time rolls around it will take you less than an hour to get ready for your tax professional. All of the forms necessary for recordkeeping, as well as preparing annual income and expense figures for tax preparation, and documenting your time spent as a gambler are included. This system requires no special math or bookkeeping skill; the professional gambler simply posts all records into this organizer, which can then be used by his or her tax preparer to produce an audit-proof return.

Is there really such a thing as a professional gambler? The answer is an unequivocal, "Yes!" This book's authors are but two examples. Many thousands of people around the country make a good living exclusively from gambling. It is not easy, but it can be done. The key is to understand which games are beatable and know how to beat them. David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth have spent many years writing about the finer points of poker, blackjack, and other beatable games. As you will see in the book, those other "games" are horses, sports, progressive slots and video poker, casino tournaments, and special promotions. They don't include craps, roulette, keno, or baccarat for reasons they'll explain. This book, was written for the not quite as experienced aspiring gambler. It shows you everything you need to learn and do if you want to gamble for a living from both the practical and the technical standpoints. The rest is up to you.

Johnny’s Girl the nationally acclaimed memoir of growing up in Alaska’s underworld as the only child of gambler John F. “Johnny” Rich and exotic dancer, Frances “Ginger” Rich. It chronicles Alaska’s mean streets and her parent’s tragic lives that were cut short. Kim Rich was an ordinary girl trapped in an extraordinary childhood, someone who dreamed of going to parties and getting good grades while living in an after-hours hell of gamblers, pimps, and con men. She longed for normalcy, yet she was inescapably her father's child, and she had no choice but to grow up fast. Her mother, who suffered from mental illness, was a stripper and B-girl: her father was a major player in the underworld of Anchorage, Alaska in the sixties, a city flush with newfound oil money. Only after her father was gruesomely murdered when she was 15, and Kim became a journalist, was she able to fill in the missing pieces of one American dream gone horribly wrong. Kim's true story is a tale of a woman's search for her parent's secrets. What she finds is both shocking and tragic, but in the end she's able to discover her true self amid the remnants of her parents' lost lives.

A gripping, true story of one man’s forty-year struggle with compulsive gambling and his hard-won recovery. "My history of gambling really began before I was born." So opens Born to Lose, Bill Lee's self-told story of gambling addiction, set in San Francisco's Chinatown and steeped in a culture where it is not unheard of for gamblers (Lee's grandfather included) to lose their children to a bet. From wagering away his beloved baseball card collection as a youngster to forfeiting everything he owned at black jack tables in Las Vegas, Lee describes what gambling addiction feels like from the inside and how recovery is possible through the Twelve Step program.