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Comment by btkthrowaway1 | Hacker News Reader

I've always found it funny when sales skyrocket when the jackpot is unusually high. 10M isn't that appealing but suddenly 1B is?

I understand the lizard brain mentality, not trying to knock anyone, I just get a little chuckle out of it

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Personally yes. I am a realist where I know the odds are almost 0 and wasting my money on an almost 0 percent chance doesn’t make sense at all.

But when it’s 1B I still know I won’t win, but it’s also an amount where I at least feel like I should put my name in just in case. Not a lot of tickets but maybe like $10. Seems irrational but I believe that’s what most people are thinking.

That my whole point though. 10M isn't worth putting your name in "just in case"? That's why it's funny to me. It's like saying I wouldn't cross the street to pick up $10M but I would for $1B.

$10 is still a lot of money and that’s why you still see enough people buy lottery tickets.

But $1B brings in casuals from all over the place that usually don’t buy lottery tickets. For some it’s the entertainment value, for some it’s “ohh might as well”.

Well you'd be putting your name in almost every night then, because it's always at least $10 million in one of the lottos (pretty much). $10 * 365 days a year is $3650. That's a big sink of money for something you know for almost certain you're not going to win. But $10 three times a year you're also almost certainly going to lose, but you're only out $30.

You're surprised that sales increase when the EV increases?

EV decreases as sales increase though

I don't care what the EV is, when your chance of winning is 1 in 302,575,350 you're better off selling your house and betting it all on black

No, because you're not homeless if you don't win the lotto. Definitely not better off doing that.

Pfft, there's only a 52.6% chance of losing a bet on black, which means there is 47.4% chance the you could win and end up with two houses minus real estate transaction costs. And that's without going to Monaco where you can play on a 37 pocket wheel.

There's a cost to winning the lottery. Everyone knows you won. In most states, at least. If I'm going to put up with the hassle of losing my privacy, dealing with stalkers, family members begging, friends begging, etc ... then I want it to be a really big win. Then I can give away a relatively large amount of it to my friends and family, maybe even enough to keep a few of them as friends, and buy sufficient protection and anonymity for myself and my family so we can stay safe.

$10M is going to be $5M in a lump sum, and maybe $3M after taxes. That's a sufficient amount to live a comfortable-but-not-exotic retirement for however long you live. You'll still have all the bad parts of winning a jackpot, but insufficient resources to really deal with it.

> 10M isn't that appealing but suddenly 1B is?

From the article, it sounds like the probability of winning is independent of sales (in a single game)? If that’s true, it’s rational—ticket price and win odds held equal across games—to respond to a larger jackpot.

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