Tools for professional gamblers

On January 1, 2023 sports betting became legal in Ohio. Since then, I’ve won over $150K from an initial bankroll of $2421.69 using math from 1956.

By January 3, I had already withdrawn more winnings than my initial bankroll, and in total I’ve successfully lived as a professional gambler for 7 weeks generating $14.5k in free cash flow as funds for my family to live on.

The problem

This kind of income has interesting US federal income tax implications. Professional gamblers, those who are engaged in “the trade or business of gambling”, use Schedule C to report their gambling income and losses as any other small business owner can do. This affords professional gamblers the ability to carry a net gambling loss to other income on their 1040 return. Professional gamblers can also deduct business expenses related to their gambling business. Hobby gamblers on the other hand, must use Schedule A to deduct gambling losses and cannot carry a net gambling loss through to other 1040 income, nor can they deduct any business expenses related to their non-existent gambling business. There are obvious tax advantages to being considered a professional gambler.

One of the major requirements of being a professional gambler is keeping track of your gambling wins and losses in a “gambling diary” that includes certain information on each bet. In order to support my foray into living as a professional gambler, I built a spreadsheet to serve as my gambling diary. One tab of this spreadsheet is simply a log of bets I’ve placed. Another tab contains some bet sizing and statistical tools I use to evaluate a wagering opportunity, and a final tab contains a financial analysis of sorts of my gambling business.

This spreadsheet is perfectly sufficient for my needs, as my record thus far demonstrates (although the true test of my spreadsheet gambling diary will come when I file my 2023 taxes). It seems clear to me that a bookkeeping tool specifically made for professional gamblers is a niche that is underserved and that I have a vested interest working in.

The solution

I set a goal for myself to launch a web-based tool that can do everything in my spreadsheet does by the end of February.

60% through February, I now have a early version of a gambling diary and gambling toolset available at https://btrbet.app.

For the last week, I’ve been using btrbet.app for my gambling business and double checking against my spreadsheet. I’ve got quite the friction log to work through, but I think I’ve sufficiently proven to myself that if nothing else, btrbet.app will have at least one long-term user.

The next immediate steps are to build out the financial analysis toolset and to build a web extension to automatically sync bets from the major online sportsbooks. An iOS app seems a clear fast-follow, but that is a decision to make later.