[broiler]

I agree that it is pretty crappy that you can't have a bad year. This case did show that you can at least get to zero for net income in your bad year and still have a business. This case was a big change because the IRS previously only considered winners to have a business. Even some of those were challenged, see Bobby Baldwin. The Supreme Court in this case stated that gambling can be a business and the gambling losses in that computation of income were not subject to AMT addback.