"... they matched just two balls on
three of the tickets, the reward being three lucky dip tries on a subsequent lottery, each
of which came to nothing. Since a ticket costs £2, the experiment represented a loss to
the authors of £54.
This unfortunate incident therefore serves both as a verification of our result and of the
principle that one should expect to lose money when gambling."
When I was young I had a friend who bought one Massachusetts (US) lottery ticket a week. I remember he "won" (basically got his money back). When he went to cash out the cashier asked him, "do you want the money.. or another ticket". He took the another ticket and promptly lost. lesson learned. You can't win if you don't play, but 2 tickets doesn't increase your odds significantly.
Where I worked there was a convenience store store. I got to know the owners a bit. One day they were posting a sign "People at our store won $850,000 on the lottery last year". I said, "wow thats a lot". She turned, shook her head and said "I know what they've spent... its not a lot." and proceeded into a mini tirade against gambling, which she promptly stopped when a customer entered the store. Its profitiable. But in the US with sports gambling everywhere, I wonder if lotteries have lost their luster.
Matching two numbers on the last draw was rewarded with a £5 prize and a free lucky dip, but I think the £5 was only because it had rolled-over too many times.
1: Hi there! Sorry to bother you but I think I have a winning ticket for the Powerbrits Billions Megapounds but I seem to have received an error at the cashier while checking my ticket...
2: Hi, me again! Yes, in response, I made sure the ticket was for the correct lottery. And yes, the cashier was listening to me when I asked them to check it...
3: Hello, hope you're well! I'm working on getting you that cashier screenshot as well as a picture of my ticket. Just wanted to reiterate I'm sure it's a winner, and there seems to be a bug in the code...
4: Hi there! Sorry I can't take a 'clearer picture with the ticket actually visible and readable' because that's the bug in the ticket I'm telling you about! Yes, again I'm sure it was a winner, I picked the numbers myself! And now I would not like a complimentary replacement ticket for the next drawing, thank you very much! Please don't close this support ticket as completed, too, alright? What I'd like is ...
[[ 21 support tickets later ]]
24: Hi friend! Yes, I'm quite sure the numbers on my ticket are 6-9-11-15-17-21, the exact numbers of the winning draw I'm hoping you'll help me collect! You can see from my recent photo that the 1 is clearly visible in a number of places and if you turn it to the left, you'll see what looks like a 5 and 7 as well. Clearly the rest of the positions have some bug where the numbers become unclear and appear to temporarily represent other numbers, but I didn't write them unclearly in the original (sorry I misplaced that!), so it is clearly a bug in your software! You know what, friend? F--- this, I have been nothing but reasonable. I think I might have to go to Hacker News and tell everybody about the terrible things that have happened as a result of this atrocious run around you've been giving me!
[[ 2 support tickets later ]]
27: Oh, hi, Senior Support Analyst Manager Derrick, thank you so much for your warm and accommodating email! Why, yes, that would be delightful, I will gladly accept monthly part-payments, less taxes, deposited into my standard Bank of Ireland (Maldives) account. Terribly good of you, if I say so myself! You have a fantastic day, Derrick! I'll be sure to fill out that little "Support Questionnaire" you sent me in your last correspondence, too (probably from St Tropez idk). Fantastic stuff!
I have a friend who once described state lotteries as “a tax on people who can’t do math”. That’s not particularly kind or fair. To me the combination of desperation that people feel that a lottery win would resolve a lot of their problems, and how many state-run programs are dependent on lottery funds to continue to function, is indicative of how bad an idea a lottery is.
It’s a trap for people who are desperate, trying to survive and a band-aid for a budget shortfall because people don’t want to pay taxes otherwise.
If you were going to run a syndicate with 27 entrants, would you be better off buying these 27 tickets or a random bunch of 27 tickets in terms of getting a jackpot?
Or is there no difference in terms of likelihood of getting a significant win?
This paper is focused on the little prizes. The odds of winning the jackpot will be the same for any play.
In fact the only thing you can do in the lottery is to avoid "popular" sequences like birthdays etc, so that if you do win you don't have to split it with a bunch of people.
You have the best odds if you don't have overlapping numbers, so buying 27 deliberately is better than just getting random ones. That said, your xWin with just 27 tickets is still astronomically low.
I would probably avoid using these specific tickets; someone else may have had the same idea, and that means more likelyhood of prize sharing.
If you permute the numbers with a substitution cipher (randomly chosen), maybe? Personally, I'd prefer a ticket selection like this that covers all the numbers over 27 random selections that may leave some numbers open, etc; but I wouldn't be surprised if you run the numbers, assuming no prize sharing, and get the same results on any distinct 27 tickets.
It depends on what you're trying to optimize for, and how much you're trying to optimize it.
If what you're concerned about is maximizing the odds of getting a jackpot, all you need to do is pick 27 different numbers. Say, 1-2-3-4-5-6 through 1-2-3-4-5-32.
If what you're concerned about is maximizing the odds of getting a jackpot that you don't need to share with anyone else, you shouldn't play any numbers that you think anyone else is likely to play, such as the numbers in this paper, six numbers that form a straght line on the play slip (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal), any six consecutive numbers, the winning numbers from any recent drawing[1], or famous lottery numbers like 4-8-15-16-23-42 (the mystical numbers from the TV show "Lost.")
If what you're concerned about is guaranteeing a small win of some kind, then use some rotation of the numbers in this paper.
If what you're concerned about is minimizing the variance in the outcomes you achieve, then you'll want a more complicated formula for picking tickets, taking into account the values of the prizes for matching 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 winning numbers. And if you're specifically looking for a set of tickets that's robust to operational interruptions in your ticket purchasing (what happens if the lottery system goes offline when you've bought ten of your 27 tickets, and you can't buy the last 17!?)[2].
But if one of the things you care about is the fully-loaded cost of buying 27 tickets, you'll almost certainly want to buy 27 random tickets, because picking specific numbers takes mental and physical effort, and 27 random tickets are unlikely to have enough overlap that it will have a significant impact on your likelihood of winning a large prize. The main downside of buying 27 random tickets is that it makes checking whether you won take more effort than if you already had your list of numbers.
And on that note, if what you care about is the fully-loaded cost of buying and redeeming your tickets, one of the best things you can do is the opposite of what this paper is about: you want to MINIMIZE the likelihood of winning a prize. Going to the store to cash a ticket takes effort, but it isn't much more effort to claim 27 prizes vs one single prize. So if you have a choice between a 1-in-27 chance of collecting 27 $2 prizes vs a 100% chance of collecting one $2 prize, you're better off with the former, simply because you can probably avoid an extra trip to the store.
[1] Unless you think there's a problem with the RNG system. IIRC about 15 years ago there was a state that drew the same lottery numbers 3 days in a row because they introduced a new computer PRNG and part of their runbook introduced the same seed for every draw; after the third consecutive draw they fixed the issue.
[2] I've had this happen to me, though the problem was that my bank froze my account partway through buying tickets, and I was buying a lot more than 27 tickets. The most famous/infamous lottery syndicate in modern history, a group from Australia that tried to buy every combination in the Virginia lottery in the early 1990s, also ran into logistical issues and was unable to finish buying their complete set of tickets, but they got lucky and hit the jackpot anyway.
Surely you can't be serious. This site promotes social media companies all the time which you could easily argue is a much larger cause of problems in the world than gambling.
> For a more philosophical discussion of the National Lottery and its implementation for supporting charitable causes, we recommend David Runciman’s article in the London Review of Books
The UK lottery does a lot of good with its funds and should be mentally separated from other betting/gambling firms in my opinion.
If you want to "gamble" its the best option, if you don't you can always wait for the government to inflate your cash away or spend it on Hilton rooms for sailors.
forinti|2 years ago
"... they matched just two balls on three of the tickets, the reward being three lucky dip tries on a subsequent lottery, each of which came to nothing. Since a ticket costs £2, the experiment represented a loss to the authors of £54.
This unfortunate incident therefore serves both as a verification of our result and of the principle that one should expect to lose money when gambling."
acomjean|2 years ago
Where I worked there was a convenience store store. I got to know the owners a bit. One day they were posting a sign "People at our store won $850,000 on the lottery last year". I said, "wow thats a lot". She turned, shook her head and said "I know what they've spent... its not a lot." and proceeded into a mini tirade against gambling, which she promptly stopped when a customer entered the store. Its profitiable. But in the US with sports gambling everywhere, I wonder if lotteries have lost their luster.
watson|2 years ago
thebruce87m|2 years ago
Matching two numbers on the last draw was rewarded with a £5 prize and a free lucky dip, but I think the £5 was only because it had rolled-over too many times.
keepamovin|2 years ago
1: Hi there! Sorry to bother you but I think I have a winning ticket for the Powerbrits Billions Megapounds but I seem to have received an error at the cashier while checking my ticket...
2: Hi, me again! Yes, in response, I made sure the ticket was for the correct lottery. And yes, the cashier was listening to me when I asked them to check it...
3: Hello, hope you're well! I'm working on getting you that cashier screenshot as well as a picture of my ticket. Just wanted to reiterate I'm sure it's a winner, and there seems to be a bug in the code...
4: Hi there! Sorry I can't take a 'clearer picture with the ticket actually visible and readable' because that's the bug in the ticket I'm telling you about! Yes, again I'm sure it was a winner, I picked the numbers myself! And now I would not like a complimentary replacement ticket for the next drawing, thank you very much! Please don't close this support ticket as completed, too, alright? What I'd like is ...
[[ 21 support tickets later ]]
24: Hi friend! Yes, I'm quite sure the numbers on my ticket are 6-9-11-15-17-21, the exact numbers of the winning draw I'm hoping you'll help me collect! You can see from my recent photo that the 1 is clearly visible in a number of places and if you turn it to the left, you'll see what looks like a 5 and 7 as well. Clearly the rest of the positions have some bug where the numbers become unclear and appear to temporarily represent other numbers, but I didn't write them unclearly in the original (sorry I misplaced that!), so it is clearly a bug in your software! You know what, friend? F--- this, I have been nothing but reasonable. I think I might have to go to Hacker News and tell everybody about the terrible things that have happened as a result of this atrocious run around you've been giving me!
[[ 2 support tickets later ]]
27: Oh, hi, Senior Support Analyst Manager Derrick, thank you so much for your warm and accommodating email! Why, yes, that would be delightful, I will gladly accept monthly part-payments, less taxes, deposited into my standard Bank of Ireland (Maldives) account. Terribly good of you, if I say so myself! You have a fantastic day, Derrick! I'll be sure to fill out that little "Support Questionnaire" you sent me in your last correspondence, too (probably from St Tropez idk). Fantastic stuff!
sircastor|2 years ago
It’s a trap for people who are desperate, trying to survive and a band-aid for a budget shortfall because people don’t want to pay taxes otherwise.
FaisalAbid|2 years ago
column|2 years ago
gadders|2 years ago
Or is there no difference in terms of likelihood of getting a significant win?
cschmidt|2 years ago
In fact the only thing you can do in the lottery is to avoid "popular" sequences like birthdays etc, so that if you do win you don't have to split it with a bunch of people.
A lottery in the Philippines famously had 433 winners, who all played 9, 18, 27, 36, 45 and 54. (https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/asia/philippines-grand-lotto-...)
addandsubtract|2 years ago
toast0|2 years ago
If you permute the numbers with a substitution cipher (randomly chosen), maybe? Personally, I'd prefer a ticket selection like this that covers all the numbers over 27 random selections that may leave some numbers open, etc; but I wouldn't be surprised if you run the numbers, assuming no prize sharing, and get the same results on any distinct 27 tickets.
swarnie|2 years ago
Or to put it another way, this system ensures you only lose £52 a week maximum before any additional free lucky dips or rolldowns.
jmharvey|2 years ago
If what you're concerned about is maximizing the odds of getting a jackpot, all you need to do is pick 27 different numbers. Say, 1-2-3-4-5-6 through 1-2-3-4-5-32.
If what you're concerned about is maximizing the odds of getting a jackpot that you don't need to share with anyone else, you shouldn't play any numbers that you think anyone else is likely to play, such as the numbers in this paper, six numbers that form a straght line on the play slip (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal), any six consecutive numbers, the winning numbers from any recent drawing[1], or famous lottery numbers like 4-8-15-16-23-42 (the mystical numbers from the TV show "Lost.")
If what you're concerned about is guaranteeing a small win of some kind, then use some rotation of the numbers in this paper.
If what you're concerned about is minimizing the variance in the outcomes you achieve, then you'll want a more complicated formula for picking tickets, taking into account the values of the prizes for matching 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 winning numbers. And if you're specifically looking for a set of tickets that's robust to operational interruptions in your ticket purchasing (what happens if the lottery system goes offline when you've bought ten of your 27 tickets, and you can't buy the last 17!?)[2].
But if one of the things you care about is the fully-loaded cost of buying 27 tickets, you'll almost certainly want to buy 27 random tickets, because picking specific numbers takes mental and physical effort, and 27 random tickets are unlikely to have enough overlap that it will have a significant impact on your likelihood of winning a large prize. The main downside of buying 27 random tickets is that it makes checking whether you won take more effort than if you already had your list of numbers.
And on that note, if what you care about is the fully-loaded cost of buying and redeeming your tickets, one of the best things you can do is the opposite of what this paper is about: you want to MINIMIZE the likelihood of winning a prize. Going to the store to cash a ticket takes effort, but it isn't much more effort to claim 27 prizes vs one single prize. So if you have a choice between a 1-in-27 chance of collecting 27 $2 prizes vs a 100% chance of collecting one $2 prize, you're better off with the former, simply because you can probably avoid an extra trip to the store.
[1] Unless you think there's a problem with the RNG system. IIRC about 15 years ago there was a state that drew the same lottery numbers 3 days in a row because they introduced a new computer PRNG and part of their runbook introduced the same seed for every draw; after the third consecutive draw they fixed the issue.
[2] I've had this happen to me, though the problem was that my bank froze my account partway through buying tickets, and I was buying a lot more than 27 tickets. The most famous/infamous lottery syndicate in modern history, a group from Australia that tried to buy every combination in the Virginia lottery in the early 1990s, also ran into logistical issues and was unable to finish buying their complete set of tickets, but they got lucky and hit the jackpot anyway.
greenpizza13|2 years ago
duffyjp|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
sys_64738|2 years ago
pc86|2 years ago
osullip|2 years ago
raspyberr|2 years ago
SketchySeaBeast|2 years ago
cantSpellSober|2 years ago
> For a more philosophical discussion of the National Lottery and its implementation for supporting charitable causes, we recommend David Runciman’s article in the London Review of Books
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n04/david-runciman/the-p...
Finnucane|2 years ago
swarnie|2 years ago
If you want to "gamble" its the best option, if you don't you can always wait for the government to inflate your cash away or spend it on Hilton rooms for sailors.