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Comment by User23 | Hacker News Reader

Powerball tickets have negative EV after taxes, but I’m willing to spend a grand total of about $20 a year on them by playing when the jackpot is north of half a billion. Because the $20 loss has absolutely no effect on my quality of life, but the win would.

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That's just measuring the EV in Utils as opposed to Dollars.

Isn’t that a “gateway drug” effect? I’m similarly afraid of sometimes having wine alone, because I know it’s addictive.

Gambling has a similar distribution to most markets. 20% of the gamblers generate 80% of the gambling revenue. Most people that gamble don’t ruin their life. Most people that drink don’t ruin their life/health.

There’s some ethical concerns where the gaming industry (and liquor industry) will market more towards problem users or in ways to generate more problem users, but buying $20/lotto tickets a month isn’t a guaranteed start of a problem, nor is having wine alone sometimes.

Typically, when the jackpot is up in that range, the tickets actually have a positive EV.

Super unlikely, the main reason is at that point many people buy tickets and it becomes more and more likely the jackpot is split between multiple winners [0].

Actually the largest Powerball at $1.586 billion was split between 3 people [1]

[0] https://chance.amstat.org/2020/02/lottery-ticket/jackpots-ev... [1] https://apnews.com/article/archive-6d98eff765c9e2f4b68367131...

Odds of winning are 1 in 292 million. So unless the odds were that the jackpot would be split 6 ways or more the tickets have a positive EV.

Except that Powerball tickets cost $2 each, not one dollar as you were assuming. (And of course, taxes)

Yeah good point. Also delayed payout / lump sum discount.

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