I think this is the best advice in the thread. Its hard to keep your poker "cash" separate from your regular cash. Need gas on the way home from poker? Use "poker" cash and replace it later...right? Going to the hardware store? Easier to grab some bills from your poker stash than to go to the ATM first. You're going to have to be pretty nitty to make this work. So if you're that nitty, be nitty about your record keeping. I don't think you'll need a physical bankroll at all.

I agree that 'separate' cash is not needed. Keep a notebook, log or find an application to just track your results. Set a high watermark before you try to move up and a low watermark as a reason to pause.

Not sure how you are moving money in and out of a CD either. I used to have a CD come due every month so I could add/subtract as needed but never transfer in and out 'as needed'.

You will be your own biggest enemy of your bankroll, I agree with that too!!

If you will only play at one place (area), then the lock boxes are a super option. But don't ever feel like you need to take gas money out of your left pocket because your poker money is in your right pocket!!

Also find out from the regs when the casino starts issuing W2-Gs when you cash out. You may 'need' the lock box to slow down what you take home and avoid some additional issues. My best poker night ever was 'interrupted' by a cashier trying to get my SS#. I told her I was into the game for most of the rack, but she didn't care. I just took it down and had other people do it for me. Took a while, but it is something that will pop up. With 'no cash' on the tables starting to trend it will be even tougher to deal with going forward. GL

Some poker rooms have gone to electronic safe deposit boxes where they keep your cash on account. I wouldn't keep a huge hoard of cash in an account like this, but it isn't much different from a box full of that casino's chips.

Another alternative is to color up to the oversize big denomination chips. You'll still lose the same amount if you get robbed, but the thieves will have to go through casino security cameras to cash out or fence them at 1/2 face value.

99% of the time when this question is asked it is for "when" my bankroll is so big, where do I put all the cash?

When (and if) you grow a large bankroll put it in bricks of 50k with rubber bands on both sides in a few different hidden fire proof locations.

I personally dont trust electronic or analog casino boxes (casinos do close, and they do get hacked. I have first hand experience) and I dont trust banks with 100% of my roll also for reasons mentioned above.

While I agree not everything should go into one place, that much cash is mildly absurd.

For starters, let's pretend you paid taxes on your winnings, in which case you needed to get a few bricks to the government. And if you decide to be a tax cheat ($50k+ is something you go to jail for), you have to launder that money. You can use cash for a lot of purchases - groceries, gas, etc. - and use cash at a rate of a few hundred a month. But you're going to trigger flags if you show up to a car dealership with 2 stacks. The CTR limit is more or less there as a hint as to how much the government thinks a legitimate person might ever use at one time. It is likely you will not be able to spend $50k in dark cash.

Next, logistically, $50k bricks is just ridiculous and tight rubber bands will leave marks on the bills. Cashiers will happily give you the $5k bands they use - when you cash out $5k+, just ask them for the band. Or just ask for a handful of unused bands. Or order them yourself online (the downside being they come in bags of like 100 and someone will think/know you have $500k cash at a certain address).

You stole my post!

5K bands are for nits.

Actually, when I bought my car, I paid 9900 in cash, the the rest on credit cards. So as long as your below 10k it won't alert the "powers that be".

I have already had the PTB go into my account and help themselves to 3.8K on some money they thought was theirs when they did some quick calculation. lol if they only knew.

Cash is king. Everyone should always have cash on hand, like at least 5k. Nothing to do with poker, but electronic money is too vulnerable.

You realize that if electronic money is no good, paper money is likely no good either? Sure someone - including Mother Nature (via solar storms) - might Alec Trevelyan our asses, but if the financial system collapses so does the government and fiat currency is worthless too.

All assets have liabilities. Some are illiquid, like T-bills, but also goods that nobody wants, like salt. Others are non-fungible, meaning they can't be easily exchanged, like houses ... or even guns.

Cash isn't liquid in large amounts. You got an SAR for paying $9,900 in cash, whether you're aware of it or not. Most casinos have an even smaller threshold, like $2,000 or $3,000, before they record your name for a potential SAR.

It's also not particularly fungible in large amounts. Sure, I'll trade a $5 with you at the vending machine because yours is wrinkled. But the number of people I could trade a wad of cash big enough to band is vanishingly small (because my money is clean and I faithfully report taxes to PTB and I don't want marked bills or dark currency).

So it's absolutely critical that a large bankroll be diversified - keeping high denomination chips (semi-liquid, highly fungible) is fine despite the risk of the casino going under, some cash is fine despite its unwieldiness in bulk, and some illiquid assets is fine despite its illquidity.

That 10k figure is only a max. Any cash transaction over the 10k must be reported. But that does not mean they can't report smaller amounts. I would not even be surprised if your 9900 transaction was reported. They already had your ssn so they could have filed a ctr. Or they might have chosen to file a sar. You would never know

Banks have specifically been told to report transactions below the 10k threshold they believe might be suspicious. I will almost guarantee it you paid $9999 in cash and the balance on your cc or a loan or whatever a report would be filed.

"You can use cash for a lot of purchases - groceries, gas, etc. - and use cash at a rate of a few hundred a month."

If you gave me $100k and gave me 3 months, I could turn that into a clean $100k. Now I could probably not launder $30k per month for a year. But for a "nor time" or not often case it would not be hard.

"Also find out from the regs when the casino starts issuing W2-Gs when you cash out. You may 'need' the lock box to slow down what you take home and avoid some additional issues. My best poker night ever was 'interrupted' by a cashier trying to get my SS#. I told her I was into the game for most of the rack, but she didn't care. I just took it down and had other people do it for me. Took a while, but it is something that will pop up. With 'no cash' on the tables starting to trend it will be even tougher to deal with going forward."

1. Putting money into or removing from a lock box ( real or virtual ) will not trigger a W-2G.

2. What you did was structuring and could have resulted civil forfeiture of all of that cash. The it would have been up to you to prove it was clean and pure.

Of course you could. That's why there's a name for it.

I was countering the claim one could,only spend few hundred a month without a ctr. Doing this occasionally would be very easy. The trick for those who do such regularly (and illegally) is finding ways to keep doing such. (And that is not something I feel I could NOT do)

They do not issue W2-Gs for cashing out chips.
Tournament wins over a certain net profit, yes.
BBJs. Yes.

Cashing out $15K from the pits or poker? No. All the casino reports is that you took $15K in cash. The do not state and the IRS cannot prove that it is $15K in winnings.

The government gets a ton of CTRs. They started out paper forms, but now they will only accept electronic reporting. They are swamped.

Now if you are stupid enough to massively under-report your income and trigger an audit, the IRS will search for those CTRs.

And if your poker journal (you do keep a detailed record for the IRS, don't you?) shows you only cashed $3500 that session when they have a CTR for $11000, well you have some explaining to do.

But if your journal shows that you cashed out $11K after buying in $9K (each buyin dutifully recorded) and you declared your $2K profit... where is the problem?

For those who recommend keeping a large denomination chip as opposed to cash, say if you take a $5,000 chip out of a casino and come back a couple weeks later, how much scrutiny will you receive yourself when you legitimately try to cash it? Are they going to go back and review tapes from two weeks ago before they cash it? Does it depend on if you are known as a regular or not?

In my limited experience, if they've seen you play games that warrant big chips, they don't blink an eye, but if they don't recognize you, they putz around until someone checks something. It's exactly the scenario you want.

Thanks for the reply, and I agree, I'd also prefer extra scrutiny on me to make sure the cashout is legit.

Don't poker players have credit cards? I haven't used cash at a gas station in more than 20 years. In fact, unless I'm spending less than $5, I use a credit card for purchases at all retail outlets. The cash I have is pretty much for poker only. There's no reason to avoid using cc's unless you're not reporting income/paying taxes and you want to avoid the appearance of spending money you theoretically don't have.

There is a well known story about the MGM not only refusing to cashing a $5k chip. Although in my experience this is not the norm.
http://www.chiptalk.net/forum/thread...iscated.36334/

In my opinion you are overthinking the management of a $1-3 bankroll. Depositing $1-2k a week into your bank is far from throwing up any flags for structuring. Get two bank accounts and almost absurd to consider it structuring.

In my opinion only the best $1-3 players would be consistently making $2k a week, so best of luck encountering this issue.

Key part of the story ...

Chips are not money. Treat them as cash outside of the casino at your own risk.

in the case of the MGM, they want to make sure whoever is cashing in that chip does not have any outstanding markers. By giving it to someone else to cash in, it raises a red flag.

I remember cashing in large chips and the first thing she asked me was where was I playing, then she asked for my card, then she said she'll be right back and picked up a phone.

If I take chips home it's only because the line was too long and I'm coming right back the next day. They are worth nothing and they're owned by the casino.

They, and every other Nevada casino, have a legal responsibility under Nevada Gaming Regulations:

also

Another handy thing to have is buying a pair of shoes that have a hidden compartment in them. There are ones that have hidden places to hide things either in the tongue or in the bottom of the shoe.

So much wrong in this post, as mostly pointed out by callipygian. You sir, have no clue how cash transactions work in the real world and what actually alerts 'the powers to be'.

wouldn't it be easier just to go to a tailor and adding hidden pockets.