As part of the Big Beautiful Bill which passed Congress and then signed by the president in July of 2025, the W-2G rules changed effective January 1, 2026. The threshold used to be $1,200 and now it’s $2,000. Most slot and video poker players believe that $2,000 isn’t nearly high enough, but that’s a decision for another Congress to address.
On December 31 there was one set of rules for W-2Gs. On January 1 there was another. The machines had to be reset to lock up at $2,000 instead of $1,200 as soon as possible after the clock on New Year’s Eve struck midnight.
The thing is, this has to be done manually, machine by machine on at least some machines. While most slot machines at reset start off with meter numbers that are much too low to be of interest to advantage players, that’s not always the case. Some games reset in positive territory — meaning that if you’re the first knowledgeable player on such a machine when it gets turned back on — you usually have several games where you have the advantage.
Often these games will have four or more denominations, and five or more “number of coins” settings for each denomination. Some games have way more than this. There are games where you will have 50 different games, all in positive mode, whenever the machine is reset. This could easily mean $10,000 or more in EV if you have the bankroll to play all of the games, including the ones at $50 a hand or more.
You aren’t guaranteed to win on these — it is gambling, after all, with variance — but the odds are in your favor.
So, shortly after midnight (early New Years Day), I planned to be in a major casino looking for slot techs making adjustments to machines. On most machines, resetting the machines won’t create an exploitable situation, but on a few machines they will. I had a list of machines that I thought might qualify — but I’m sure there were others that I didn’t know about.
Once I found a team of slot techs working on games that I thought would turn positive at reset, it would simply be a matter of sitting down and waiting until they finished — and then being the first player there.
Most players were not aware of this opportunity, but surely some were. The thing is, I believe there were relatively few pros “in on” this deal — and lots of casinos to cover. I figured if I picked a casino with a number of the machines I liked, my chances were pretty good to get one or more of the lucrative resets.
If at 1 a.m. somebody hit a jackpot for, say, $1,500, and the machines had not been reset yet, the machine would lock up. When an attendant game, they would just pay off the jackpot without issuing a W-2G. There are relatively few jackpots higher than $1,199 and less than $2,000, so not too many players would be inconvenienced by this. And the ones that were would be delighted to not get a tax form with their money.
And there is always a problem with staffing. When are the slot techs scheduled to work? And how many of them partied for New Years Eve? Maybe the casino would want to wait until 8 a.m. or so to start. If these slot techs were making changes to hundreds of machines, the casino certainly would want them to be at their best.
Plus, in the early hours of January 1, casinos are very busy with more-than-the-usual-number-of-inebriated players looking to get lucky. Casinos very well might not want to shut down any machines in order to maximize their profits from this party-like atmosphere.
I decided to go downtown at about 3 a.m. There are lots of casinos within walking distance which would all be affected by the new tax bill. While I don’t have player cards at all of them, if I can get on a reset machine I’ll happily play without a card. Better with a card, of course, because slot club points and mailers are valuable, but a reset machine could potentially be worth more than $10,000 and I wasn’t going to be a stickler about whether I got every slot club point.
On December 31, Bonnie and I went to a quiet NYE shindig at a nearby residence. I had one glass of wine starting about 7 p.m. and cut myself off so I’d be at my best later. We told the hosts we were going to leave at 9 p.m., no matter what state the party was in, and we did. I was in bed by 9:30 — setting my alarm for 2 a.m.
I got up with the alarm, did my morning routine, and was on the road by 2:40. It’s about 15 minutes from our house to the downtown casinos — so I was right on time with my plan.
I started at Circa because that’s the downtown casino with the most suitable slots. I walked around five casinos over the next half hour looking for working slot techs. Nothing! There were relatively few customers at this time of morning, and no slot techs changing machines that I could see.
I was surprised. I thought I had outsmarted most other players — but it turned out that whatever my calculations were, they were wrong. Oh well. Not the first time.
While I was out and about, I checked around for some machines that were in winning position. After all, a whole mess of players went through in the past few hours, and a lot were out-of-towners who were clueless about winning at slots. Maybe they left something!
I found a number of small plays and one “sorta big” play requiring a $10-per-spin input. I loaded it with $1,000 and began to play. I hit three or four $500+ intermediate jackpots, including a final one of $1,100.
The game ended up showing $3,400 in credits which included the $1,100 final win — and the machine locked up! The attendant came and asked for ID. I told her I didn’t hit any jackpot — the $3,400 was accumulated credits. She “corrected” me, telling me that it was a $3,400 jackpot. I quietly told her that the last score was “only” $1,100 and that there was no taxable event.
She was unsure and said she’d have to talk to her supervisor. She took my player card and told me she’d be back. Five minutes later she correctly paid me the $3,400 that I was owed.
At first, I thought the machine had been reset incorrectly and instead of the W-2G amount being set for $2,000 they set the machine lockup amount when you tried to cash out for that amount. Other casinos have similar features. I hadn’t experienced it at this casino before. Maybe this was a long-standing policy there.
Although I did make $2,400 on this particular play, and a bit more on other plays, I didn’t find the reset opportunity I had hoped to get. I had planned my work, worked my plan, and it all came to naught. This happens sometimes.
Over the next few days, I continued to look for working slot tech teams. The change didn’t have to be done in the wee hours of the new year, and it would be just as valuable to me on January 2 or 3 if I could be there when it happened. But no. I failed to find any.
I didn’t have to tell you about this “failure.’ You would have never known had I not written about it. But the winning process, for me anyway, has included a number of these one-of-a-kind situations. When I find one, I try to figure out the best way to exploit it. This one didn’t pan out, but maybe the next one will.
