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Comment by zzanz | Hacker News Reader

I used to work at a lotto counter in my towns supermarket. When I started I noticed alot of older regular buyers, a weekly lotto purchase like the daily newspaper. However, as the younger generation started bringing in kids I didn't see this habit, instead just an occasional purchase for a birthday gift or rolling the dice because the jackpots gotten big enough (funnily enough the time when the chance of winning is actually lowest).

Overall I would consider lotto small next to the scratch cards (our countries version at least). I have never seen a more predatory marketing strategy, and completely swept under the rug next to lotto being berated with anti-gambling campaigning. To be fair, lotto is bad, but scratch cards are much, much worse.

A memory that stuck for me was a customer blowing well over $100 bucks on scratchcards over 20 minutes, just pulling over and over, then getting card declined at the grocery checkouts.

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> funnily enough the time when the chance of winning is actually lowest

Not really?

The odds of winning are the same regardless, because you need to match every number to get a jackpot. Really, there is just an increased chance of splitting a jackpot with another person when the prize gets really large, since more tickets are generally sold. But I imagine EV of a lottery ticket with a $1B jackpot is still higher than the same lottery ticket when the jackpot is $100M.

There’s a balance between jackpot size and a given drawing’s popularity for sure.

There are also bad number choices and good number choices. 1,2,3,4,5,6 is a terrible selection, for example. Not because it is somehow “less random”, but because you’re guaranteed to be splitting that jackpot with a 1,000 other nerds who were trying to prove a point!

To a lesser degree, choosing numbers under 31, or under 12, will put you in a collision space with other players who like to choose birthdays.

Just use the random pick and don’t think about it. If you do win the jackpot, you have higher odds of being the only one.

> 1,2,3,4,5,6 is a terrible selection, for example. Not because it is somehow “less random”, but because you’re guaranteed to be splitting that jackpot with a 1,000 other nerds who were trying to prove a point!

Uh... so at first I saw your point, but if your odds of winning never actually change, how is not winning better than splitting a jackpot?

I guess if you only play one drawing, you’re right. Winning is always better than losing.

But if you play the lottery week after week, year after year—and you always play the same numbers—then you’re ensuring a mediocre prize should you actually get the jackpot.

Playing the lottery is not a mathematically sound decision in any case, but there’s no reason to make it even worse by chopping your potential jackpot winnings down by over 99%

The odds of winning don't change, the odds of splitting the pot change. Certain numbers are picked more than others so to have the best odds of not splitting the pot, random numbers are best.

Numbers greater that 31 are better. Almost 30% better! Because you are less likely to split a pot when you win. But not good enough to make playing a lottery ticket a winning propostition.

Maybe, "the time when expected value is the lowest"?

The BC 6/49 lottery (6 balls 1-49, one bonus ball) for example has 53% of the common "prize pool" split amongst all 4-ball matchers, so if you're not hitting the jackpot you get less cash out of a high-demand drawing.

And given the prize pool is something like 18% of net receipts... yeah EV is still well in the negatives.

> > funnily enough the time when the chance of winning is actually lowest

> Not really?

A big jackpot draws more players, and that reduces the payouts at the intermediate levels.

> that reduces the payouts at the intermediate levels

Which has nothing to do with your chance of winning.

But has something to do with the expected winning making it worth the investment.

What do you mean by intermediate levels? In the 2 main US lotteries the only award that gets split is the single jackpot. Even the 2nd place award is $1 million and is not divided among multiple winners.

And now we also have the long-term effects of online sports betting to look forward to.

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