Originally Posted by
redietz
I'm going to say that my best guess is that Rob had the returns he claimed for the Fezzik wager, but that any tax disclosures after he "retired" would probably show significant losses, as would returns prior to the Fezzik-wager bracketing years. If I remember correctly, and Rob can tell me if I'm wrong, Rob made no announcement about "retiring" until after the fact, meaning he did not declare being a non-professional in advance of being "retired." If there are posts announcing his "retirement" in advance, well, that would be helpful to see.
A statistician would say he was giving himself another way of breaking a data run into discrete, separate compartments for no good reason. We have the "losing years," ostensibly due to playing as an "advantage player." Then came the winning years, ostensibly as a "Singer player." Then the "retired years," which Rob doesn't really want to include in the data run. Add them all together, and the numbers are probably not very significant. Rob prefers to break them up and assign reasons for this and reasons for that.