Is it + EV to play scratch-offs and lottery?

[Tebowl]

serious question, are they beatable?

[DrStale]

Yikes. You probably shouldnt be gambling.

[Cuse0323]

10% of your roll on each ticket, can't lose.

[ZetaPsi808]

no. that is how the state generates revenue. people are much more willing to play lottery tickets instead of paying taxes to the state.

[JohnGalt2341]

I'll answer your question with a question... Is it +EV to play Over Unders that are -200 on both sides? That's essentially what the Lottery is. I'll break it down even further... if you were at a Family Reunion and the Lottery was in charge of doing a raffle and they sold one hundred tickets at $1 a piece... when the drawing happened there would be 1 prize and it would be for $50. That's the Lottery.

[TR88]

fuk the lottery

[hubie69]

I cant believe this was asked..

[RollPlayer]

Seriously, do you think the state is in the business of purposefully losing money?

[dj_destroyer]

Some scratch cards are +EV if you can find the right ones... Ones like Tic-Tac-Toe, Crossword, and others that show you the game spaces can be targeted for patterns and exploited... Though most of them have been corrected.

[RubberKettle]

Not even close pal.

During college I worked at a liquor store and I've seen people spend $300 and not hit jack. Ive also seen others run through tickets and purchase new ones with their 'winning's for over 2 hours and barely break even. We had a guy named Dale who would come in every day. He even had his own duster to clean up his mess. He probably dropped around $50-100 a day depending on how much he had. He never really won anything. He would end up +$10 some days and lose it all others. He did hit one for a grand, but Im sure he was down long term.

[Masu485]

Are you kidding me? I don't have info on American lotteries, but for one we have here, these are the details for the last one:

Jackpot: 7 173 066
Odds of winning the grand prize: 1 in 13,983,816
Price per selection: $2
Payoff rate: 47%

So that means if you wanted to cover every number combination, you would have to spend around $27 - 28 million to ensure yourself winning just the 7 million grand prize.

Chances just to win your money back is abysmal at 1 in 7 to 1 in 10 depending on which lotto.

The lottery is the biggest scam ever. Total sales of tickets are ALWAYS bigger than the jackpot, meaning there's no way for the organization to ever lose. Any bum off the street could start a lottery/numbers service and make money instantly. It's disgusting.

[Tebowl]

Yikes, first of all ,EVERYBODY CALM DOWN, GEEEEEEEEZ... I was half-kidding!!! y'all need some chill pills

[jcubs55]

This has to be a troll post... there is no way anyone could actually want to ask this seriously...

[zam77]

it's +ev to play the super lotto... keeps your hopes and dreams running strong forever.

[HauntingTheHoly]

It can be +EV for any individual ticket though, can it not? For example I haven't played in two years, but heard the jackpot had rolled to a three-year record of $65 million, odds of winning 1 in 21 million, so I buy one ticket. Is it plus EV? You still gotta consider taxes and the possibility of splitting it with some other idiot should you win. Prolly a good play though.

[Tebowl]

it's +ev to play the super lotto... keeps your hopes and dreams running strong forever.

When I buy a lottery ticket I pray to God I don;t win because if I did somehow win the lottery, I'd be dead within 6 months due to excessive partying and drug use.

[TR88]

just lost $50 playing this shit fuk it, no more

[Tebowl]

just lost $50 playing this shit fuk it, no more

To me, there's nothing wrong with a scratch off here and there, but not every day. That is certainly not a winning proposition and I'm sure millions of people do that.

[sharpcat]

Scratch offs can offer value if you feel like taking the time to find out which tickets have a lot of big jackpots remaining with a limited number of tickets left. If you do find this rare occasion you than have to locate these tickets. All in all it is really not worth the time invested but yes you could find +EV in scratch offs its just very unlikely.

[BigDaddy]

Some scratch cards are +EV if you can find the right ones... Ones like Tic-Tac-Toe, Crossword, and others that show you the game spaces can be targeted for patterns and exploited... Though most of them have been corrected.

this is true

[milwaukee mike]

you guys are WAY too narrow minded.
here in wisconsin there are $20 scratch offs that run for a certain length of time, and online you can see how many $100,000 winners there have been. there was a game last year that only had a couple of days left (around 8,000 $20 tickets) and there were still 2 $100,000 winners left (unless someone was sitting on one before cashing it in which does happen).

so it was very much +ev to play that game when there was $160,000 in tickets left and $200,000 just in top prize winners left.

but if you aren't going to track tickets sold/winners then it is impossible to be anything close to +ev. online (powerball, etc) is usually 50% house edge and scratch offs usually pay back 60-80%. absolutely terrible odds compared to almost every other bet you could make.

[milwaukee mike]

Scratch offs can offer value if you feel like taking the time to find out which tickets have a lot of big jackpots remaining with a limited number of tickets left. If you do find this rare occasion you than have to locate these tickets. All in all it is really not worth the time invested but yes you could find +EV in scratch offs its just very unlikely.

leave it to sharpcat to come up with another sharp post as i was typing my similar response

[Ian]

Yes, they are beatable, but it's incredibly difficult. In order to control payouts, the numbers are non random, so on some types of cards if you can see one number you can tell whether or not the rest of the card will be a winner. There was an article in Wired magazine about a geologist who cracked the code and brought it to the attention of the Canadian government. It's also probable that others have cracked the code as organized crime members have hit the lottery at an unprecedented rate and an academic from Texas managed to hit the lottery iirc 4 times.

Also, progressive jackpot lotteries can become so large that they are +EV, but you still wouldn't want to play them as it would require a bankroll of millions of dollars in order to exploit it.

So yes, scratch tickets are theoretically beatable.

[HauntingTheHoly]

@sharpcat & MM - but is this information on scratch offs easily obtainable online to the public? Furthermore, how about the information as to where to find these (possibly "scarce" by the time you start your search) tickets? I wouldn't think you could find that anywhere, but who knows. Finally, I wonder if there is actually ANY person who has done this sort of research and then bought up tons of these tickets in your scenerio - have you heard of anyone?

[HauntingTheHoly]

Also, progressive jackpot lotteries can become so large that they are +EV, but you still wouldn't want to play them as it would require a bankroll of millions of dollars in order to exploit it.

I made this point earlier, but said nothing of a required bankroll. If it's +ev, it counts! You can just buy one ticket to a huge progressive and just tell yourself and others "If I lived to be infinity years old, I would get RICH making this decision...." lol

[Capybara]

Yikes. You probably shouldnt be gambling.

This.

[B1GER1C828]

lol...if lottery gets upto like 100 billion then i think it is

[milwaukee mike]

@sharpcat & MM - but is this information on scratch offs easily obtainable online to the public? Furthermore, how about the information as to where to find these (possibly "scarce" by the time you start your search) tickets? I wouldn't think you could find that anywhere, but who knows. Finally, I wonder if there is actually ANY person who has done this sort of research and then bought up tons of these tickets in your scenerio - have you heard of anyone?

last year i bought $1000 worth of $20 scratchoffs when they were beatable, i cashed out $820 which was slightly above the average payout (without the 2 $100k prizes). even though i lost $180 it was a smart move based on the tickets left.

for wisconsin, the law is that the information has to be made public (like in nevada where even the high stakes games had to be out in the open). wisconsinlottery.com shows the winners, you just have to filter the data down to the $100,000 winners for each game. for example right now the $20 game book is coming to an end and there have been 4 top prizes claimed out of 5. they sell about 4000 tickets/day of $20 scratchoffs so when it gets down to the last 10 days they will have a daily countdown. with one or two days left if nobody has claimed that 5th one it's almost certainly a +ev situation.

[Br0nxer]

biggest sucker plays going

for sh1ts and giggles back in the day on my way home from the track after hitting a big trifecta i bought 100- five dollar scratchoffs. all the same ones. ended up having about 40 dollars worth of winners in the bunch

[milwaukee mike]

and haunting you are right about locating the scarce tickets, sorry forgot to answer that. i have a buddy that owns 9 gas stations so i asked him, he had 3 stations with tickets left and was able to sell me 50.

[donkdown]

my ex's dad hit the powerball no lie.. got all 5 numbers but not the powerball..powerplay made it 1 million.. boy do i run bad..

[Br0nxer]

somebody said the store owners can buy a machine to see thru the ticket to see if its a winner. dont know if that BS

[nobs]

serious question, are they beatable?

serious question, are you crazy ?

[HauntingTheHoly]

for wisconsin, the law is that the information has to be made public (like in nevada where even the high stakes games had to be out in the open). wisconsinlottery.com shows the winners, you just have to filter the data down to the $100,000 winners for each game. for example right now the $20 game book is coming to an end and there have been 4 top prizes claimed out of 5. they sell about 4000 tickets/day of $20 scratchoffs so when it gets down to the last 10 days they will have a daily countdown. with one or two days left if nobody has claimed that 5th one it's almost certainly a +ev situation.

Interesting. When you say "one or two days left" does that mean that any unsold books will be taken off the shelf?

[durito]

a 45% hold is equivalent of a -1,000/-1,000 lineset