Here is $1M. Try to Win the Lottery | Hacker News Reader

Here is $1M. Try to Win the Lottery

adamgrant.info

I'm a fan of our state lottery.

It's transparent, has outside consultants from the various university math departments vetting it, accountants ensuring the running costs are low, and sans overheads all money put in goes back out as either prize money or grants.

It's essentiantly optional taxation with a small chance of winning a lump sum, a very good chance of getting 10% back, and a certainty of supporting community projects such as housing near hospitals for patients|their families in need, public housing, arts, etc.

https://www.lotterywest.wa.gov.au/lotterywest/where-the-mone...

In the last year it paid out $350 million in commnity grants, $700 million in prizes, and self funded with a sliver of money paid in for tickets.

It is a pretty complex topic, but, personally, I am just thankful to GA lottery for making it possible for me to go to college without having to take out bajillions in student loans.

No, I didn’t win the lottery, but it just happens to fund the state’s Zell Miller/HOPE scholarships that are available to any GA resident attending a school in GA. As long as you qualify GPA-wise (which had a rather generous cutoff iirc back when I was a student, 3.0 for HOPE and 3.3 for Zell Miller; you can also regain that scholarship later or lose and regain again, it isn’t a one-and-done deal), you are set.

I played all $1 million of my starting money, and finished with $3,674,383. I don't think I learned the lesson I was supposed to.

I played $60k and ended with +$64k net. Going to open a Robinhood account next.

Buying in bulk as always been a way to “defeat the odds”.

MIT student purchased tickets in bulk until they weren’t allowed to

> I don't think I learned the lesson I was supposed to.

Yeah... I won $1mil with $10k

Same. Twice. This is even better than crypto! ;)

I just won $100,000,000. https://tinypic.host/image/D5mU9w

Let it ride!!

Here's the thing: if you don't play, you definitely can't win and your odds are zero. You can't win if you don't play.

I personally buy a single $2 lottery ticket about 2-3 times per month. I know I'm not going to win. But you know what I do? I spend at _least_ 30 minutes, if not the entire day, fantasizing about what I would do with the money.

Am I going to win? Not at all. But I think I now have a better idea of what my financial priorities are than I did before I started playing! I know what I'd do with my money if I won $1M, 2M, 5M, 10M, 25M, 50M, 100M, 250M, 500M, 1B... I know what I'd do with the money. And you know, I may never get to $1 billion, but given my current income and age, I will definitely hit the $1M and $2M marks, possibly the $5M point. And so knowing what I would do with that kind of money? That's pretty fun to think about.

In a world where my wife and I go to see Dune 2 in movie theaters and it costs $100, or in a world where a burrito can cost $15-20, or gas prices at $6+ per gallon, a $2 piece of entertainment with the tiny, infinitesimal chance of winning big seems eminently reasonable to me.

Now, if you're Bruno Mars and have a gambling problem, then maybe you should spend those $6/mo on something else.

I won 50k after spending only 10k, I would have quit, but maybe that's not the point. If one person wins the jackpot and posts here, I wonder if people go "well it could have been me" just as we do when someone from our local area, or even state, wins.

2 things. One on dark mode on iOS, it’s practically impossible to see what’s going on. And 2 the “losses” don’t make sense. I played three times with 1000$ a go, won 1100 quid but my losses were listed as 3k… maybe that should be spent?

Good point on dark mode. Let me take a look at that when I'm back in front of my computer. Granted, this is probably due to a plug-in. You were using in your browser to force dark mode because I haven't yet added any logic for that so it should just default to b on w

Oh. For losses that makes sense because you lost a certain amount and you lost a certain amount so every time you play you lose a dollar but you might gain more than that so your bank total will add that all together.

The lottery is another tax on the poor. A few people win but everyone else loses a few disposable that they can’t really afford to lose in the first place

If I've learned anything from the comments section, it is that some people do still win...

I'm sort of interested in how the social aspect plays out. To all the other folks on HN, if you win please comment here and tell us what you will spend your (fictional) wealth on. It will be a source of inspiration (and survivor bias) for the rest of us to keep playing.

Terrible UI/UX but good idea.

I've won $20k so far with 1,215,887 tickets left!

Tell me another way you can have a chance to change your life and the life of everyone you love, so substantially, for just $2. If you can spare $4/week it's worth the chance IMHO.

Looks like every simulation is a new lottery, would be interesting to simulate "x per lottery" as well. eg. spend 10,000, 5/lottery

A friend of mine described lotteries as a tax on people who can’t do math.

These days, the lottery often grows above $600M, at which point spending 2 dollars for a 1:292M chance in winning actually makes sense. As long as you don't need those 2 dollars because you still won't really win. So a widget that keeps the jackpot low and doesn't batch tickets into a single lottery simulation is a bit disingenuous.

I'd be far more interested to see some analytics on different amounts of lottery tickets at different jackpot levels, and spread over time with jackpots increasing/decreasing as they do IRL. What are winnings if you spend $10 a week for a year? $100? What if you only spend when the jackpot hits a specific number?

The answer is still, "You probably won't win the jackpot", but at least it would be a more realistic simulation of how things actually work.

> These days, the lottery often grows above $600M, at which point spending 2 dollars for a 1:292M chance in winning actually makes sense. As long as you don't need those 2 dollars because you still won't really win.

Just keep in mind the advertised prize is the sum of payments of a 30-year annuity. You've got to use the cash prize when considering your winnings, so it's not really a good deal until the advertised prize is about $1.2B. (And you should really consider federal taxes and potential for multiple winners)

Personally, I get enough entertainment value to make up for the short fall in expected value when the prize gets up to $1B. But I also don't have any problem affording the tickets, and most likely would be the most boring lottery winner ever if I won a big prize. Maybe I'd splurge and order muni fiber even though it makes no sense to do so.

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