# If I only matched on 4 more numbers



## JohnT (Jan 18, 2016)

Well, not winning the lottery was a let down, but not surprising. The odds are insanely stacked against you. It was fun, though, dreaming. The dreaming that the wife and I did before the drawing was well worth the price of the ticket. 

Here is what we agreed to..

1) I quit my job. 

2) I Earn a degree in enology (UC Davis).

3) I Enroll and graduate from Culinary Institute of America

4) We then build winery/restaurant from scratch in Napa or Sanoma. Restaurant would have old world cuisine, introducing real food to Californians (no bean sprouts, poblanos, or avocados. 

5) We find 13th century ruins, restore the building and convert to a winery. Hungary would be nice, but Tuscany would be the place of choice.


Oh well. perhaps next time...


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## roger80465 (Jan 18, 2016)

John, I'm with you 100% of the way except I would stop a #1!


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## ibglowin (Jan 18, 2016)

Starting to think that whole Powerball is rigged. Between SWMBO and I we spent $70 on the two drawings (Sat and Wed) and only won $16........


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## Double Daylo (Jan 18, 2016)

Not rigged. Its just math. Imagine sitting down a slot machine and they odds are 1 to 292 million that you win the jackpot. Nobody would ever sit down. But for some reason people are all for the lottery. 

I never play the lottery although I love to gamble and am into the odds and math side of it. I stick to the cards!


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## Boatboy24 (Jan 18, 2016)

$40 'invested'. I took home $4. Now to figure out how to write that off.


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## ibglowin (Jan 18, 2016)

You actually can write off gambling losses up to the amount you win. That means you have to report your winnings in order to to take the loss!


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## yanks4carolyn (Jan 18, 2016)

I would be making wine at my fabulous beach house I was going to build. I agree the dreaming was fun.


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## ceeaton (Jan 18, 2016)

I have to admit, I was eyeing up some southern facing slopes in my area on the way to work. Only drove off the road once. Have lot's of water issues (too much) in our area. For $150K I could probably get the land, the vines and pay off my mortgage, so 1.5 billion would have been a little overkill. Would have been nice to give it all away if I could have remained anonymous.


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## Rocky (Jan 19, 2016)

I have a BS in Math and I know that the odds are very, very small, BUT (and this is the big BUT) they are not ZERO. Years ago New York state had a tag line for their lotto advertisements, "All it takes is a dollar and a dream!" and I thought that captured the essence of playing the lottery. To me it was worth the dollar just to play and then dream about all the things I would do with the money. I did not really think I would win but it was fun just to think about it.


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## ibglowin (Jan 19, 2016)

Your odds of winning are ZERO if you don't play. LOL It only takes one ticket to win. We only seem to play win the pot gets huge otherwise we just won't find time in our schedules to stop.


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## roger80465 (Jan 19, 2016)

ibglowin said:


> Your odds of winning are ZERO if you don't play. LOL It only takes one ticket to win. We only seem to play win the pot gets huge otherwise we just won't find time in our schedules to stop.



Isn't it funny! What's the lotto jackpot this week - $40 mill? Not worth the investment. Like a mere $40 mill is just pocket change. We are weird creatures.


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## ibglowin (Jan 19, 2016)

Hey if you have 1 chance in 292,000,000 then you might as well play when there is a big jackpot just incases LOL


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## Double Daylo (Jan 19, 2016)

See to me that is nuts. 

You have far better odds of hitting the same roulette number 5 times in a row. with odds of 1:79M as apposed to 1:292M If you let it ride every time with a starting bet of say 10 bucks. You now end up with a payout of 525M. You could even get closer to the lotto odds by then putting it on red or black. But even that the odds are closer to 1:160M. And now you are at your 1 Billion dollar number. Almost half the odds of lotto. 

Yet you will never see anyone hit 5 numbers in a row. Let alone be willing to let it ride 5 times. Its a weird mind game that the lotto plays. And it works on the overwhelming majority of the country. Why? I have no idea.


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## sour_grapes (Jan 19, 2016)

Double Daylo said:


> See to me that is nuts.
> 
> You have far better odds of hitting the same roulette number 5 times in a row. with odds of 1:79M as apposed to 1:292M If you let it ride every time with a starting bet of say 10 bucks. You now end up with a payout of 525M. You could even get closer to the lotto odds by then putting it on red or black. But even that the odds are closer to 1:160M. And now you are at your 1 Billion dollar number. Almost half the odds of lotto.
> 
> Yet you will never see anyone hit 5 numbers in a row. Let alone be willing to let it ride 5 times. Its a weird mind game that the lotto plays. And it works on the overwhelming majority of the country. Why? I have no idea.



While I do not fundamentally disagree with your premise, I think you have a problem with your example. You specified a $10 bet, which would yield the $1.05 B, with odds of 1:167M at the roulette wheel. However, you are trying to compare to a _$2 bet_ in the Powerball lottery. If you took your $2 to the roulette wheel, and did your same betting procedure (and won), you would wind up with "only" $210M. So, no, the odds are not twice as good at the roulette wheel as in the large-payoff lotteries.

To get a payoff of $1.68B at the roulette wheel from a $2 bet, (which is close to the recent jackpot), you would have to hit the same number 5 times in a row, and then put it all on red 4 times in a row. And the odds against that are 1:1.57B.


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## barbiek (Jan 20, 2016)

I tend to play it when the money is low better odds lol but I must admit I did invest 10.00 against my better judgement.


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## Double Daylo (Jan 20, 2016)

sour_grapes said:


> While I do not fundamentally disagree with your premise, I think you have a problem with your example. You specified a $10 bet, which would yield the $1.05 B, with odds of 1:167M at the roulette wheel. However, you are trying to compare to a _$2 bet_ in the Powerball lottery. If you took your $2 to the roulette wheel, and did your same betting procedure (and won), you would wind up with "only" $210M. So, no, the odds are not twice as good at the roulette wheel as in the large-payoff lotteries.
> 
> To get a payoff of $1.68B at the roulette wheel from a $2 bet, (which is close to the recent jackpot), you would have to hit the same number 5 times in a row, and then put it all on red 4 times in a row. And the odds against that are 1:1.57B.



Ok you win that one. I look at it as most people will buy 10 bucks worth of tickets. Which is flawed. 

Barbiek the odds are the same if the jackpot is 40M or 1.5B. Still the same amount of numbers to be chosen from. Still 1:292M


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## hardworkin (Jan 20, 2016)

The funny thing is.. of the three winners... if you would ask all three of them if they thought they had a chance to win, I bet at least one of them will admit that they felt fairly confident that they had the winning numbers. 
I think the right thing to do is to allow them to continue to think that.


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## richmke (Jan 20, 2016)

ibglowin said:


> You actually can write off gambling losses up to the amount you win. That means you have to report your winnings in order to to take the loss!



It's a gamble when I make a kit if it will pay off, and I like it. Can I write off the kits that don't make the cut?


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## Boatboy24 (Jan 20, 2016)

Double Daylo said:


> Barbiek the odds are the same if the jackpot is 40M or 1.5B. Still the same amount of numbers to be chosen from. Still 1:292M




Yep, but the odds of having to split the pot are much lower when its 40M. 

I'd still rather split 1.5b three ways...


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## sour_grapes (Jan 20, 2016)

I believe one proper way to look at all of this is to consider what a statistician (or a physicist) would call _the expectation value_ of your payoff. This is the ratio of your payoff to your investment _if you could play an arbitrarily large amount of times._ If you could play the lottery with the $1.6B jackpot, say, 100 trillion times, you would make more money than you would lose. You would be foolish not to play.

On the other hand, if you could play the lottery with the $40M jackpot 100 trillion times, you would lose money. You would be foolish to play.

In any event, I agree with everyone upthread who asserted that what you are buying is a $2 license to dream! I also think that if I won, it would have ruined my life -- *but I would be willing to take that chance!!*


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## barbiek (Jan 20, 2016)

Double Daylo said:


> Ok you win that one. I look at it as most people will buy 10 bucks worth of tickets. Which is flawed.
> 
> Barbiek the odds are the same if the jackpot is 40M or 1.5B. Still the same amount of numbers to be chosen from. Still 1:292M



My bad your right! Wasn't looking at it correctly lol


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## richmke (Jan 20, 2016)

Or, you can look at it from an Economists point of view regarding the utility value of $2 vs $40 million. The utility value of $2 is virtually $0. Whereas, the utility value of $40 million is huge. Even when adjusted for the expected value, the expected value of the utility value of $40 million is still more than the utility value of $2. Also, there is some entertainment value to the $2 wager, even if you loose. That adds to the utility value.


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## sour_grapes (Jan 21, 2016)

richmke said:


> Even when adjusted for the expected value, the expected value of the utility value of $40 million is still more than the utility value of $2.



I am skeptical that that is a true statement. That would imply that it would be a rational decision to play the lottery. Even though the expected payout is far, far less than 1. If this were the case, why would a rational person not play the lottery with all of his/her life's savings every week?



> Also, there is some entertainment value to the $2 wager, even if you loose. That adds to the utility value.



As many have said, this is probably where the "payoff" occurs. And you get essentially the same entertainment value from one ticket as from plunking down thousands of dollars.


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## richmke (Jan 22, 2016)

sour_grapes said:


> I am skeptical that that is a true statement. That would imply that it would be a rational decision to play the lottery.





> As many have said, this is probably where the "payoff" occurs. And you get essentially the same entertainment value from one ticket as from plunking down thousands of dollars.



It all depends upon your Utility curve. Since part of the payoff is the "entertainment", if you derive no utility from gambling, then you keep the $2. Some people may not put enough "utility" on a $40 million payoff to offset the odds. If you are happy and set in your lifestyle, $40 million doesn't mean that much more (not much additional utility). So, you could care less.

The problem is: I have heard that low income people disproportionately play the lottery. For someone that makes $100,000/yr, the utility of $2 is the difference between buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks vs McDonalds. For a low income person, that $2 has a lot more utility (whether they have a decent lunch or not).

While the "entertainment" value might be higher for a low income person (dreaming of a much greater change in lifestyle), it is a very poor use of money for someone without much money.

Regarding plunking down thousands of dollars ... There is the law of diminishing returns. You may love the new StarWars movie. But, that doesn't mean you want to spend the entire weekend watching it over and over. The utility of $2 is one thing. The Utility of $2,000 to buy a thousand tickets is another. $2 means you skip Starbucks for a day, and exchange that for a dream. $2,000 means you might have to give up a trip to the Bahamas during Snowmageddon.


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## sour_grapes (Jan 22, 2016)

I only contested the assertion that


> Even when adjusted for the expected value, the expected value of the utility value of $40 million is still more than the utility value of $2.


 I (like you originally did) excluded the utility value of the entertainment in assessing that particular statement.


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