Gambling losses are deductible ONLY:
  1. If you are itemizing your return. So if you are filing your tax return and you are claiming the standard deduction, then you cannot take this deduction, AND
  2. Up to the amount of your winnings. If you did not win anything, then you cannot deduct any of your losses.
so to itemize i believe you have to have paid quite a bit of mortage interest, have a lot of medical bills or donated a crap load of money to charity. If you have gambling losses you can't claim them unless you can itemize one of these. If you own a house you can claim your gambling losses up to your Claimable gambling winnings. So if you win 10 k that is not tax and then win 20 k that is you can only claim up to 20k. So the way it is here in florida is poker winnings are not reported on cash tables. If you hit a jackpot poker then you will get taxes. Anything over 600 on dogs horses is reported, Anything over 1201 in the casino is reported. Last year i hit a 4000 royal flush at the casino here and i forgot to put it in. I got in the mail a couple days ago a letter saying last years taxes were to be ajusted oopsy my bad.