Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

latexr wrote: post #104

lunaru wrote: post #2

I think people understand the odds are small. However, perhaps they perceive their chances of meaningfully turn around their life in other ways have even smaller odds. i.e. improbable vs actually impossible. At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance. Secondly, because everyone realizes the chances are small, the real product being sold is Hope.…

> At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance. Not really true. If you have more money you can buy more tickets which leads to higher— or even certain —odds. https://www.iflscience.com/how-a-man-won-the-lottery-14-time...

Post by chairmansteve » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #93

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m at the point where I take it as a red flag when someone doesn’t understand this, and instead bangs on about “low odds” and “the idiots that think that they’ll win”. A combination of superficial booksmarts, a misplaced sense of elitism, and a very real lack of emotional intelligence, that I know that I don’t enjoy being around. There’s definitely a low end on this bell curve, but I think that your average Joe Blow…

There's a difference between buying hope, and decreasing the quality of what you do have significantly for false hope. The hope of winning the lottery is essentially false hope, but false hope is better than nothing, that's true. But look at LatencyKills post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46474645 if someone is buying 100s of dollars worth of lottery tickets that's a real problem, I'm sure you understand that…

Post by latexr » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #121

latexr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance. Not really true. If you have more money you can buy more tickets which leads to higher— or even certain —odds. https://www.iflscience.com/how-a-man-won-the-lottery-14-time...

> If you have more money you can buy more tickets which leads to higher— or even certain —odds. I don't think there are any lotteries with that feature. You can guarantee that you win, but you still won't have certain odds because the payout isn't guaranteed.

Post by retsibsi » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 1:27 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #119

staindk wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 1 through 6 are drawn you'd probably have to share your winnings with many more people than most other combinations.

Given how much people are avoiding 1 through 6, I think you'd probably be better off picking that.

Post by retsibsi » Sat, Jan 03, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #128

retsibsi wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting but IMO it's very likely to be chosen more often than average. If you choose a random number, then for each other player your chance of picking the same numbers as them is the same as your chance of winning: in the case of Powerball, 1 in 292,201,338 = 0.0000000034. If you instead non-randomly choose 123456, then for each player that actively avoids 123456 your chance of picking the same numbers a…

I do see your point, but I doubt this probability analysis was done by the people who say "what? The numbers will never be drawn in a sequence like that". It's not that they want to avoid common numbers.