And/or just random luck. From the sheer number of people playing, there’s bound to be a few who have successful runs just out of sheer luck. Just like if there were 1 million people, about a thousand of them will flip 10 heads in a row.
They’re certainly free to believe they have a ‘system’ but they really ought to consider if maybe that 11th flip won’t come out the way they expect. Basically the reverse Martingale. Gambler’s Fallacy in a different form.
Which is fine as long as players realize their chances of winning have been appropriately reduced. The balls representing commonly picked numbers aren’t going to avoid coming out of the hopper just to fit somebody’s strategy.
So, if 1-2-3-4-5-6 or something like it comes out, sure, you may split, but if you avoid picking those types of tickets in in the first place, you always lose whenever they show up.
It’s not really worth considering the chance of splitting most times, unless you have a really good model for human behavior, i.e. how many tickets people will buy for a given draw and the likely distribution of selected numbers.
I have been told by people who sell lottery tickets that scratch-offs aren’t entirely random. They work like pull-tabs in that each roll/package of scratch off sells for a certain price and has a specified value of winning tickets to be paid out by the seller *. Using the numbers in the pull-tabs link , if I know there are 2900 lottery tickets in a roll, and 2890 have been sold and there has only been one $225 winner, the other $225 winner must be in the remaining ten tickets. So it could theoretically be done, but practically speaking, it would either involve an employee of the seller being involved (which is probably illegal) or someone staying at the store during all hours that tickets are sold (possibly for days) not just a couple of hours.
Usually the seller only pays prizes up to a few hundred dollars and larger prizes must be claimed through the lottery agency
There is no reduction. If you buy five entries and those five entries are unique amongst themselves then you have five chances at a win. It doesn’t matter whether they’re over in the more-human search space or the less-human search space. You’re just as likely to get a hit either way and that chance is exactly 5 out of X.
Statistically, it’s not worth playing the game. If you’re already at that point then you might as well go all in for the dream case since that’s what it’s all about anyways.
And, again, given that there’s no real advantage with aiming over here versus over there, in terms of getting a hit, it’s not really important to have a good model of human behavior. Just as it’s perfectly reasonable to pick numbers like 0-0-0-0-0, 1-1-1-1-1, 2-2-2-2-2, it’s perfectly reasonable to have a horrible model of human behavior. Nothing - in terms of getting a hit - actually matters other than submitting more numbers and not duplicating your own numbers. But any model of human behavior - good or not - gets you at least somewhat less likely to duplicate with someone else.
And it could be luck as well. But I suspect that he only counts how much he spends buying tickets that have a winner in the sequence, and doesn’t count when there are no winners.
I know that there is a website you can go to that will tell you the info on scratch-offs and it will tell you what percent has been bought, and how much of the prize pool has been awarded. I can’t find it right now, and it might be the one you just linked to, but I thought I remember it being a bit different and more comprehensive.
But, the fact that 2890 of 2900 tickets being sold with a winner outstanding doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been sold, just that it hasn’t been redeemed. I don’t know what percent of tickets are redeemed right then and there vs later, but I imagine that percent changes as we approach Christmas and people start buying them up as cheap and easy stocking stuffers.
But yeah, it’d be a bit like counting cards. You only play when the table is “hot.”
Which brings up another important factor to consider in these sorts of calculations. Expected value is not the same as expected utility, which is what really matters. Even if each $1 lottery ticket gives you a one chance in a billion of winning two billion dollars, before spending your life savings you have to ask whether having a 0.02% chance of having more money than you could possibly know what to do with is worth the 99.98% chance of being homeless.
On the other hand plunking down a buck or two that you won’t miss for a minuscule chance of a life changing windfall, and a one hundred percent certainty of being able to fantasize about getting that windfall might be worth it. My wife buys a lottery ticket once or twice a year on this basis, but in order to avoid the disappointment of losing she never actually checks the numbers. To my mind seems to invalidate the whole exercise, but if it works for her who am I to argue.
And that’s why I do it. Some people will happily pay $15 to watch someone else’s fantasy for a couple hours. I sometimes spend $2 to have my own fantasy for a couple days.
Like I said, I usually play on my birthday and on Christmas, as that way I can fantasize getting a really nice present, and I play if I notice that it’s ridiculously high like it is now, because that’s not just life changing money, I could change the world with that.
That’s a little weird, yeah.
But then, you know if someone in your state won, and if no on claims it, then usually the city it was sold in gets into the headlines. So maybe she checks it if she sees that it was sold at the same place she bought hers.
I used to work with a guy who believed that the winning scratch off tickets were near the beginning of the roll. He’d wait until the merchant put a new roll in the dispenser then buy his tickets. He also claimed to be up. I didn’t argue with him.
However, if you avoid 1-2-3-4-5-6 style numbers, whenever a non 1-2-3-4-5-6 number comes out, you have a greater chance of winning. Those two factors cancel out exactly, so a non-123 picker has the same chance as a 123 picker and both have the same chance as a random picker.
For easier math, pretend the lottery is just pick 1-100, and there are 10 1-2-3 style numbers. a basic chance of winning is 1/100 or .01. A non 123 picker will have a 10% chance of losing because of 123 picks coming up, but a 90% chance of having a better chance of winning because of non 123 numbers coming up, so the expected value is .1 * 0 + .9 * 1/90 = .9/90 = 1/100
No arguments from me on that, but what tends to happen quite often is that the non-123 picker will use the non-123 odds as the true odds and think they have some kind of winning ‘system’ based on a faulty premise.
