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Comment by pestatije | Hacker News Reader

I don't want one chance to win $1.2b...i want 1000 chances to win $1.2m...and there is no lotto in the world offering that.

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What you want is a raffle, not a lotto. You see those more in Europe (like the massive ones in Spain). Here in the states they sometimes pop up. Illinois used to run million dollar raffles around the holidays. Fixed # of tickets and a guaranteed winner.

Interesting. I guess having a raffle was cutting into the lotto profits?

Raffles are boring. The odds are low. Someone always wins. Lotteries like Powerball are more exciting because the jackpot rolls over many many times. Ticket sales spike tremendously when it gets to levels like this.

Find 999 friends/coworkers/trusting strangers, pool resources, and split the winnings?

A startup?

Is there an automated way to buy tickets (online, or whatever)?

A startup could hire someone to buy tickets all day, but that would get tedious...

You can "subscribe" on at least the IL Lottery site to "auto buy" tickets.

There's been a number of instances where people did precisely that--they just sent a bunch of taskrabbits out to buy large numbers of tickets in lots of different locations. Very time-consuming, but still profitable.

there's an app called JackPocket

I think I just understood that the official outlet for lottery tickets physical stores. Is that really so? As a European I am kind of baffled by this, as we (at least in my country) have had an official app for buying tickets for the state lottery and sports betting for ages.

What is the reason for that? Do the players only trust hard physical paper numbers?

Btw, the euro jackpot is about €120m, but still far from profitable.

Yeah there is a startup that does this, they buy lotto tickets for you in app for a fee.

Scratch tickets?

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