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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

1) I guess you're saying "don't play this game"

2) That could be used quite easily if you're the guy in the shop and you encourage people to scratch right there in front of you. If it's one out of 20 you barely need any info to come up ahead, since the odds/payout is probably within a few % of breakeven and each card starts at 5% of the pack. One or two losers and the rest are worth +ve, alterntively a winner and the other 18/19 are worth even less -ve.

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1) Now that I think about it, that information doesn't tell you that much about the odds. The odds can be calculated independently. Whether or not people win is kind of irrelevant to the odds. It has more to do with the number of people who play (so the odds of a winner in the group is low). I just found it interesting that the gov't was like "jeeze, nobody is winning, let's just shut it down. And the players (who never win) are like "no!".

2) Yeah, the 1 in 20 winner really jumped out at me. Open a new pack and someone scratches a winner and you know with 100% certainty the other 19 are losers. Or, you sell 15 out of a pack and all are losers (most buyers scratched right away) and of the remaining 5, you know there is 1 winning ticket.

I worked at a bar that had those stacks of pull tab cards. Random cards in the stack would give you cash that you exchanged the card for.

The manager of the bar would know which ones were redeemed so if it got low and he knew the big money cards weren’t won yet, he’d go play the machine until he got it.

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