A few years ago I wrote a script to compare my numbers against all previous drawings. Still didn’t “win”!
Was this data scraped from somewhere? Seems like it would be pretty tedious to manually enter all of the previous winning combinations.
Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
61–70 of 156 posts
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#62I read somewhere the lottery it's just a tax on poor people. Some people are saying it's about the dream of a better life but dreaming is free.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is technically true, but the end result is that if you abolish the lottery (unpopular) you have to raise taxes (even more unpopular) to replace lost revenue. Sin taxes work so well at plugging funding gaps specifically because they are optional.
That and they are taxing the poor and under educated who are least likely to complain. Making things explicit such as stamping a “45% Tax” on lottery tickets really changes people’s perception. The Trump administration almost flipped out when Amazon considered explicitly adding tariffs to people’s checkout.
> The Trump administration almost flipped out when Amazon considered explicitly adding tariffs to people’s checkout.
I wish they called their bluff and did it as it’d force Amazon to show the country of manufacture.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#64I would be really curious to see the money side of this. I am not sure about Powerball, but with EuroJackpot, some of the smaller wins can cover the cost of the ticket (or even cover a holiday!). It would be really interesting to watch the expected value play out over repeated plays!! I am imagining a running balance where you keep track of total spend versus total returns. Most of the time the balance steadily goes…
EV is always negative.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#65I would be really curious to see the money side of this. I am not sure about Powerball, but with EuroJackpot, some of the smaller wins can cover the cost of the ticket (or even cover a holiday!). It would be really interesting to watch the expected value play out over repeated plays!! I am imagining a running balance where you keep track of total spend versus total returns. Most of the time the balance steadily goes…
Should also include a running tally for the total net profit taken in by the government (after payouts) across all expected ticket sales. That way you can watch your number going negative while the government's balloons up into billions.
This would show the big difference between the Euro and US lottery formats, where (typically) in Euro lotteries, the government takes taxes on the stake and so the jackpot is tax free, whereas in US the prize is taxed as income or windfall. This is one of the reasons why US lottery jackpots tend to be stated as much bigger than Euro ones despite having a larger purchaser pool.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#66What people often overlook about lottos is that for a few dollars, you’re buying the chance to dream about a better life. And that dream lasts right up until you check the numbers. That’s the part rational investors tend to miss … the power of dreaming. And I’ll admit it - I play the lottery too, even though I already live a pretty comfortable life.
Couldn’t the dreaming be done even without betting? This feels like an excuse to me to be completely honest. I’ve personally had thoughts about what I would do if I were millionaire, and given the amount of stories of people coming into a large sums of money and their life getting significantly worse, I’d prefer to actually not win it.
> Couldn’t the dreaming be done even without betting?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
Presumably its easier to dream when there is an unpredictable outcome, rather than knowing you have to wake up tomorrow to spend the day driving around and pissing in bottles. An outside force that could change circumstances is a better feeling than knowing that really isn't any way of changing your career when you can't go to school because you can't afford it.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#67So you're saying there's a chance?
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#68I 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.…
I know people in the neighbourhood/street I was born, who still live there (well over 50 years in the same house) who bought the postcode lottery tickets since forever, 12x a year, never won anything; this year it fell in the adjacent area code... It must hurt.
What does it mean - adjacent area code? They can’t play anymore?
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#69What people often overlook about lottos is that for a few dollars, you’re buying the chance to dream about a better life. And that dream lasts right up until you check the numbers. That’s the part rational investors tend to miss … the power of dreaming. And I’ll admit it - I play the lottery too, even though I already live a pretty comfortable life.
There's a property website which covers my local area, and every few weeks I'll do a search for the city-center, and sort by highest-price.
It's fun to look at the kinda house you could buy if you had €5 million in the bank. Even though I'd never have that much, and even if I did I wouldn't spend it on such a thing.
That's a habit I picked up when I lived in the UK and I played their national lottery once every month or so.
(/r/SpottedonRightmove/ is also a fun sub if you like this kinda thing; "right move" is a UK estate agents chain.)
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#70I think it would be interesting to have a version where the chosen numbers were the same every time. We all know the odds won't change but there are countless people who play the lottery this way. They have "their" numbers and they never deviate for fear that if they do, that's when "their" numbers would pop up and they'd miss out on the win.
Yes and another that uses a fixed ridiculous combination like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. This is my favorite way for bringing the odds nearer to mind.