I promise to share all of my winnings with Pelicans...

I think everyone else should too :)

A good friend of my family won the NY lottery TWICE. Both on $1 million for life scratch offs.

Nobody would notice if I won.

Until poof! Gone.

Let the fantasies begin. Buying a ticket makes 'em more legit. Hmmmm, sure would upset the tax men if somebody handed the unclaimed winner to Tunnels to Towers, eh?

Myself and two track buddies, have for years said that if one of us wins, it’s Porsche cup cars, toter homes, etc. for everybody, so we track them all year.

If I could get only $1, per day, from every American, I'd be satisfied.

I'm pretty sure everyone in this thread is good enough at math to know their chances of winning are extremely low. The people who are bad at math - I call them the willfully poor - are those who view buying lottery tix as a source of income because they win just often enough with the scratch offs that they then keep buying for the big jackpots, while they can barely afford their cigarettes, and don't think of a way to pull themselves out of poverty other than to play the lottery. And there are many millions of those folks.

I don’t think it’s the lotto that is doing those people in. The sports betting apps on the cell phones would be my educated guess.

I don't think I have bought lottery tickets since I left a job which had lost all sense of fulfillment. I don't seem to have any needs or wishes which I can't reach through ordinary means.

The lottery is nothing more than a tax on idiocy.

I can swing $2 to be in the game. odds don't matter to me honestly.

do agree the sports betting nonsense is massively out of control. though I do see those scratch off addicts every time I grab a 24 at the gas station. need to check the 'hierarchy of deplorables' chart but I think grabbing a 24oz beverage comes in slightly above the 'I'll take two of those $10 scratch offs' so I'm secure in my social standing.

Well, I still know y'all.

The sports betting industry has skyrocketed since the Supreme Court overturned the federal betting ban in 2018, with mobile platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel fueling a multibillion-dollar market. Analysts project revenues could hit $14 billion by 2028.


AI apps to assist your betting, for a fee.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/high-rollers-algorithms-meet-dudes-cashing-ai-gambling-bots


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Won $12. Will get a sandwich at a local deli.

2 winners last night. Texas and Missouri.

I haven't checked my numbers yet.

So far, the biggest winner of this group. But then, how much did you spend on tickets?

single $3 ticket

In my new favorite book 'the missing billionaires' there's a framework for evaluating the value of a lottery ticket. Naively we'd think that a $1.8B payoff and 1:262M chance of winning means expected value is positive and therefore its a good bet but...

Turns out actual value to you depends on your wealth and your risk utility.

Suppose youre willing to bet aggressively with crra of 1. Suppose you only have $1000. So you can buy 500 $2 tickets. Means your chances of not coming away with 0 is 500/262M, which is pretty much zero. You shouldn't spend the money because the impact on your assets of buying the $2 ticket is much more impactful than the upside x chance of winning.

The math for change in your wealth is from this powerball is:

$-2 + (W-$2)(1/262M)ln(1+($1.8B/(W-$2)))

Yields:

Wealth | Dollar Value of Ticket
$10k | $-1.99954
$100k | $-1.99626
$1M | $-1.96915
$20M | $-1.6556
$100M | $-0.87
$250M | $0.0069
$500M | $0.91
$1B | $1.93
$10B | $4.32
$100B | $4.81
$1T | $4.86

So assuming aggressive crra of 1 the value break even point is when your net worth is above $250M. That is where the insignificance of the $2 is so low that the low probability upside starts to balance out.

FWIW I don't believe crra is a good/correct risk utility function but I think its close enough if you determine it for any individual bet size. In reality nobody is a 1 so above break-even numbers are optimistic.

the last time spending $2 had an impact on my assets i was 5 yo

Nobody cares about mathematics.
My math is much simpler. When the Powerball reaches or is close to $1 billion I spend $2. I want to be in the pool. I don't expect to win, but for sure I won't win if I don't buy one ticket.

I'd love to see the person the moment they checked their ticket and see they actually have all six numbers... The shock has to be off the charts, if it actually doesn't kill them..