81–90 of 191 posts
$80 BILLION a year in lottery spending, that was shocking to me. Only 30 some countries have bigger yearly budgets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...
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Long before that point, lotteries that decide to innovate in game design don't have a professional actuary on the staff to run the ruler over the designs?
That's the weird part for me. Surely inventing a whole new game mechanic, must be their industry's version of rolling your own encryption?
I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.
My aunt actually won 2 million back in 2007. She had just divorced my uncle (so I guess she is my ex-aunt) and bought a ticket and used the birthdays of me and a few others as the numbers. She was smart in that she chose to set up a trust fund with yearly pay outs instead of a lump sum. She told her sister that she was going to give her a million, but then after realizing that the tax was going to be around a million, she then changed her mind.
She then bought a not too fancy house on the beach for probably too much money (this was in 2007 after all). Then bought a non running yacht for $40k and a new car. Her first pay out check for the year was spent in a matter of weeks and she still had monthly payments on the new toys so she couldn't quit work either. Then she realized that the house payments were for 30 years, yet her pay out plan was only for 25 years and it would not be easy to make payments those last 5 years without more refinancing (she is still trying to figure that one out).
She got scammed many times on house repairs. When she first moved in, for what ever reason she said she needed to get the windows replaced. She paid a local contractor $9k to replace the windows. He showed up with a trailer full of windows and unloaded them all (and I guess that is when she paid him). He said he'd be back later in the week to do the install. Months went by with no contact so she found another local laborer to install them. But he quickly realized that all the windows were the wrong size and basically just junk left over from other jobs.
The $40k yacht never ran. Spent several years paying people to work on it, no telling how much. Then she finally sold it for $20k.
Then a couple of years ago, a hurricane hit the coast. Her house stood, but windows were blown out and the house got completely soaked inside. It was gutted and rebuilt for $80k. Right before this happened, she had actually fallen in a parking lot of a pet supply store after tripping over a piece of rebar that was left over from a curb demolition. She caught herself with both hands but it tore both shoulder cuffs. I don't think lawyers even got involved. The store cut her a check for $80k. It was that $80k that she used to repair the house with. The insurance still hasn't paid her back yet. Something about they wanted every contractor preapproved or something and they reject every receipt or invoice that she sends in (still an ongoing issue).
Been a wild ride...
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I think the irony is that from the organizer's point of view, it's essentially working as intended. The "windfall" mechanic was supposed to make rollovers more enticing by increasing the payout amounts for everyone. The only reason to make a lottery more enticing is to sell more tickets. So they sold more tickets, and made more payouts on lesser tickets. Exactly as they planned. The lottery doesn't actually lose out…
I don't understand why this is an issue since each drawing's odds are independent. Perhaps I don't understand how these pools work.
I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.
The reason they don't do that is marketing; more people play for big jackpot. I think even saying there might 250 $1 million winners this week isn't as big of an enticement.
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> You aren't doing anything wrong. That's debatable. Lotteries are supposed to be completely up to chance. If by your own ingenuity you exploit a weakness then you are tipping the scales in your favor, which is unfair to less clever players. It's basically the tragedy of the commons; everyone has the same chance of winning, but only you know you can safely risk more and win more, lessening the winning of others.
He didn't have insider knowledge though. He used the games own rules to play an advantage. Those rules were available to everyone, everyone could have done the same.
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If nobody wins the big jackpot ("guess all the numbers") for some time, parts of it are given to the smaller winners ("guess a few of the numbers"). In this case, which happened once in a while, it became more likely that you'll win more than you have bet. Usually this means you'll win some $50; they have bet many, many times, and won $50 times many. Doesn't work any more, rules have changed so this way of winning wa…
But which set of tickets do you buy?
I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.
That actually sounds like a good idea. Though there is the old saying "the lottery is just a tax on the poor". My aunt actually won 2 million back in 2007. She had just divorced my uncle (so I guess she is my ex-aunt) and bought a ticket and used the birthdays of me and a few others as the numbers. She was smart in that she chose to set up a trust fund with yearly pay outs instead of a lump sum. She told her sister t…
I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.
And those who arrange lotteries do know their business.
I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.
The reason they don't do that is marketing; more people play for big jackpot. I think even saying there might 250 $1 million winners this week isn't as big of an enticement.