Lotteries

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I realize the chances of winning the jackpot are next to nothing, and people say it's a tax on the poor etc. etc.
But you can't win if you don't play, and the enjoyment I get from playing is worth the price.
My uncle won the Jackpot in a work pool so who knows, anything can happen.

I did win $100 again not too long ago........... yes, luck does shine on me when I least expect it.

well I'm not very lucky. I hardly ever win anything, but when the pot gets up to 100+ million I'll buy a $1 ticket. I very likely won't win, but if i did it'd be great, so worth the $1. I won't buy scratch tickets though.

I read once of a couple that won one jackpot, used it to buy more tickets and won another one or two, setting them up for life.

If I did win I'd share some but I'd live a modest life on 4k a month, same with family and friends. put the rest in gold/savings accounts. so i could have money 30 years from now.

a lot of people will go and spend it all fast though. I'm cheap though

College courses in statistics spoiled my enjoyment of lotteries.

About once a year I'll buy a $1 ticket just on a lark, but then almost always fail to later check whether it won anything.

Yop, and you cant get hit by an lightning if you dont go outside. Actually the chance on getting hit by lightning is bigger then winning in an lottery, so if I´d suppose to win in the lottery, I should as well have a phobia to leave the house.

I always prefer the scratch ticket types of lotto tickets.

I've never been motivated enough to follow through on playing the lotto. Same with scratch tickets. I feel like I spend more money on the tickets than what I win in return.

I'm very aware of the low odds, yet, through my social contacts, I know some people who won decent sums (even close to a million).

The chances of winning the jackpot are much higher than being born.
The satisfaction of buying a lotto ticket is equal to any other minor consumable imo

nope - I have taken a statistics class

Only if you dont do math. If you aware that you are spending a dollar to earn 85 ct,, there is not much satisfaction in giving away 15 cts. ^^

does not work, you can't teach math to people who don't want to learn it - "lotteries are taxes on the mathematically illiterate" same way casinoes stay in business, people are sure they can beat the odds, especially since they tout the few people who do get one or two wins (not showing how much they lost before that)

The most you can do is employ the same strategy you would for a casino.

Set a limit on what you have to gamble with. When you go through that, you walk away. If you can't do that, you don't go to casinos.

Some would say 1 ticket a week is still a waste of money, but at least you're limiting your loss for a slim chance at winning.

this exactly, if you do it as a hobby and assume your money is thrown away the same as if you were buying chewing gum or any waste like cigarettes then it's fine. The problem is that nearly everyone I know who does play actually seems to think they have any sort of chance.

I won a few thousand back in the '90s. My big mistake was letting anyone know about it. Very soon after that, people started hitting me up for personal loans on the assumption that I had won millions. Then they became angry when I turned them down.

What is it with people taking it for granted that they are entitled to a portion of my winnings (or my earnings, for that matter)?

No matter how much I win next time (if there is a next time), I'm not telling anyone except my wife, my lawyer, my CPA, the lottery commission, and the IRS. Everything would go into a blind trust, and not even Faux News would learn that I'm the winner.

What puzzles me the most - apart from the fact that Fnord, of all people, has played the lottery - are the syndicate players. You know, the ones that pool their money together to play complicated combinations of numbers that give a higher chance of winning per dollar spent.

I kind of understand the occasional players who spend a small amount, knowing the chances of winning are very small, just so they can dream - "but what if I win?" These people either don't understand how low the chances are or they do, but they look at it as a "miracle" kind of event. Miracles are not subject to statistics, so whether their chances are, statistically, 1E-10 or 1E-15 doesn't really matter. But the syndicate players are serious about this. They're trying to increase their chances, hence not relying entirely on a miracle. So they're a very particular kind of irrational - they understand enough to realise that their chances are higher with the syndicate, yet apparently not enough to realise that the chances are still too low for playing to be worthwhile.

not only that, the syndicate players are also trusting that in the event a miracle occurs a second one will also - one of them won't abscond with everyone else's winnings