Cool website! One minor bug - the Pause button doesn't work for me.
Pagination is also buggy, as the live results interfere with the historical ones.
Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
71–80 of 156 posts
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#72I 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.
It’s the same game. Betting on a pair when throwing two dice has the same likelihood than betting on a six when throwing one die.
The odds may be the same but the game is not the same.
The point of lottery games is to offer the lowest possible probability of winning that has a perception of being winnable.
So guessing few random small numbers feels easier than picking one random large number.
The whole point of the website is to show those games in a context where people without a math degree will get how low the winning chances are.
So the games with the same winning likelihood Are Not the same game.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#73[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
It means they nearly won but sadly didn't. So close yet soo far away.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#75What 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.
You're romanticizing, sadly. Every time I see someone scratching off numbers, I see a twisted industry exploiting human hopefulness and naivety. Dreaming costs nothing.
When I see office workers walking off to the dreamer highrise offices in the sky, I enviously dream of being that worker in the sky, with all those dreams of grandeur.
Dreaming does cost nothing.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#76I 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.…
30 seconds? I can daydream in bed for an hour for nothing.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#77I 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.…
The odds are really small but so are the cost of playing
Problem is there are people who buy tickets for each and every draw for years.
That amounts for not so trivial amount of money - would be much better for them if they put it in savings account or basically anything else.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#78I 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’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 off the street has about as good an undemanding of the chances of winning the lottery as you or I. Which is to say that we’re all definitely flawed in our ability to intuitively comprehend very large numbers, but not uniquely so. It’s just nice to feel like something good might possibly be coming your way. It’s about hope, exactly as you say. I’m barely even an occasional gambler, including the lottery. The one or two times where I’ve bought a ticket, it was worth the $10 or whatever I paid, which I truly do not miss an iota and never have. It’s a game. Anyone who doesn’t get that is deranged.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
In the Dutch postcode lottery, they draw a random postcode (roughly a street) and everyone that lives there and has a ticket wins. The wider area code (village level) win smaller prizes.
People get FOMO - what if my neighbors become millionaires but I didn't have a ticket?
And in this case, some code very close to theirs won. It makes it seem you missed out by a tiny margin.
Re: Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second
#80The odds of winning are so low that I tell people the odds that they will just give me the money even though I bought no ticket can’t be much lower.
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