I don’t know the actual numbers of such winners, but let’s exaggerate the situation for effect. Everybody in the entire world buys a $1 lottery ticket. That’s 6.7 gigapeople. The Earth Government keeps over half. The winner gets $3 billion. That one winner thinks it’s the best dollar he ever spent. Do it again in a heartbeat. The other 6,699,999,999 people think they were just suckered. A dollar doesn’t seem like much to lose, but it’s a sucker bet–you’re going to lose it.
6.7 gigapeeps? 
I know a PhD (either in Mathematics or Engineering – I’m not sure which) who knows the odds, knows it’s a sucker’s bet, and plays regularly.
ok, I’ll take it for the team:
it’s not a sucker’s bet.
yes, the odds of winning are exceedingly small. like really really bad. yes, if you buy lottery tickets as part of your financial planning in your life, you are an utter idiot.
but, then again, it’s only a couple of bucks. for scratch tickets there is an actual entertainment value of scratching tickets. for number-picking games, there is a non-zero chance of winning a sum of money that will set you for life, a decent-ish chance of at least getting your money back, and you can incur significant psychic benefits from feeling like you’re going to win as like all gambling.
as far as paying for things to give your life a jolt of excitement, this is pretty high up there on the bang-for-your-buck scale. I mean, what does a few shitty five dollar beer at a bar get you? calories, a bit of a funny feeling for a short while, the risk of legal trouble if you drive home, the death of a few brain cells, and possibly a hangover.
The way I once saw a mathematician put it, is that it’s a mathematically reasonable decision to buy one ticket; you’ve just changed your chances of winning from zero to something ( an infinite difference, mathematically ). And buying a second one can also be defended, since you’ve doubled your chances for the same investment. But with anything more, the ratio of investment-to-chance-of-winning drops like a rock and isn’t worth it. So, the people buying one or two tickets aren’t being stupid/ignorant; it’s the people buying lots who are. And are the ones being exploited.
I agree but we have to make sure we’re answering the right question:
Q: Is it worth it to spend $1 on a lottery ticket?
A: Absolutely! It lifts me up to think that maybe, just maybe, I could win more money than I could earn in 10 lifetimes. Even if I tear a losing ticket up, hey, it’s more fun than being on the sidelines.
Q: Is spending $1 on a lottery ticket a sucker bet?
A: Absolutely, and I’ve got the math to prove it.
This doesn’t make sense. The investment:chance-of-winning ratio doesn’t change no matter how many tickets you buy. The only thing that changes is your ability to absorb the loss financially.
I read or heard somewhere when the Lottery first was getting fired up in Texas (now there’s a cite for ya!) that your chances of winning a 5 Million dollar jackpot were roughly the same as being struck by Lightning TWICE and that was good enough for me to keep my money in my pocket.
Unclviny
I allocate money to buy lottery tickets under my entertainment budget. It’s not a tax of any kind on anybody, as the decision to purchase a ticket is purely voluntary.
I view the MegaMillions and such as kind of sucker bet. First of all, for example the current jackpot for the drawing ending 1/26/10 is 121 million which is a lot, but that’s only if you take the payout of a number of years. The cash pay out is 75.2 million, which is hardly chump change but it’s still only 62% of what they’re advertising.
Then you have to figure in taxes, which is like what about half or something so that brings it down to 37.6 million
So you spend a dollar to win $121,000,000 and you get $37,600,000 if you win.
Again a nice tidy sum 
but it’s a far crime from the “It’s over a hundred million”
And I still play, as Naomi from “Mama’s Family,” said when Mama made fun of her for playing the lottery, “I don’t care what you say Ms Harper, somebody’s gotta win that money and it might as well be me.”
A sucker bet has a real, very specific definition. It’s not simply a bet with stupid-long odds, it’s a bet in which the expected return is significantly lower than your wager.
Powerball jackpot odds are 1 in 195,249,054. Bottom line, if the jackpot is significantly less than $200M, then yes, it’s a sucker bet.
As others have noted, the tax consequences (you buy tickets with after-tax dollars, and the jackpot is a pre-tax amount) mean that the jackpot will have to be much larger than $200M to make it worth while. The highest (current) marginal federal tax rate is 35% (don’t forget state tax too), so for the above odds, your jackpot would need to be well over $300M to avoid being a sucker bet.
I do the same, and only pick up maybe 5 of the $1-$2 scratch-offs a month, tops. The largest I think I’ve won is $100, but turning my $2’s into 100 that one time did feel damn good.
File it under entertainment in the budget, and keep it there. If you were only gonna blow the $$ for movie theatre popcorn and soda, or beer at the bar, at least it offers the chance for a return on investment more so than the previous two options.
Just for the record, I never said to buy lots of tickets to increase your chance of winning, all I suggested was buying one ticket a week. I also never said it was a sound financial strategy since the likelihood of breaking even in the long run is slim. An IRA, 401K or savings/investment plan would be much smarter than someone expecting to hit the lottery!
But whether you find it fun/entertaining or not, I can’t think of another way I could wager $1, help out my state financially, and possibly win tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars after taxes, which would certainly change my life in a good way.
Can someone think of something with an equivalent potential payout given the small amount being wagered? It’s a sucker’s bet if you never win a big jackpot.
I was just in a convenience store the other day, the woman ahead of me bought $50 in scratch off tickets. I see this fairly often.
I plan on winning the lottery one day. But I have a rational plan. I don’t waste my money buying lottery tickets. I plan on finding a winning lottery ticket lying in the street.
Surprisingly, this plan doesn’t affect my chances of winning by all that much.
Lemur866 already mentioned one. Go to a casino. Bet your dollar on zero. When zero comes up, let it ride. When it comes up zero a second time, let it ride again. When it comes up zero a third time in a row, keep your nerves steady and let it ride one more time. When zero comes up a fourth time in a row, congratulations - you’ve won one and a half million dollars. (Actually, you’ve won $1,500,625 dollars but be a sport about it and tip the wheelman the $625.)
Do your chances of getting four zeroes in a row seem unlikely? Well they are - but they’re better than your chances of winning a million dollars with a lottery ticket.
Yes, it is a sucker’s bet. If state lotteries were called what they actually are – voluntary additional tax contributions – folks might look at them differently. The same people who just about revolt over a $100 yearly tax increase gladly pay $2 per week to play the lottery, because there is always that chance they might win. Maybe the IRS could increase tax compliance if they let folks buy chances on a “national tax jackpot” each year.
I believe there is research that demonstates that folks who put the most money into lotteries are often those who can least afford to play. For folks who study public policy, there is a real question if it is moral for states to do this. The counter argument – that people will gamble anyway, so the state might as well be the beneficiary – is the same one more and more states are using to justify allowing casinos.
In Australia a pretty standard bet on anything minor, say the result of a football game, is a $2 lottery ticket. The loser buys the ticket and both parties to the bet split the winnings.
I’ve won and lost a few of these over the years and mostly we have won nothing, once in a while we get a collect. Two other guys at work shared one over some meaningless game a few years back and split $100,000. I think they finished up ahead on their betting.
Well, yeah, but either way, you lose.
Well, yeah, you have a chance of winning. In sort of the same sense as every time you drive to work, you have a chance of dying in a car accident. Personally, I don’t let that small chance keep me from driving to work, and I don’t let it induce me to buy a lottery ticket.
I wouldn’t have responded to this point but because it’s the OP I had to try again. I am not telling you it’s stupid to play the lottery. I am answering your question, “Is it a sucker bet?”
The fact that there is a small bet with a huge payoff is what makes it a sucker bet. It becomes irresistably attractive. But the bet vs. payoff has nothing to do with the math of a sucker bet. You have to factor in the chance of winning. We have firmly established in this thread that the (chance of winning) X (payoff) is much smaller than $1. That is the very definition of a sucker bet.
Yes, somebody wins but that doesn’t save it from being a sucker bet.
It’s a sucker bet.
Did I answer the question yet?
It happened in Virginia in 1992. Here’s the NYT story. After that, as the story suggests, Virginia changed its rules to limit bulk ticket buying.
Indeed. At roulette, dolphinboy (or anyone else similarly inclined) would ‘only’ have to hit the right number 4 times running to turn his $1 into $1,679,616. (36^4) And the odds against would be a mere 2,085,135 to 1 against (38^4 - 1) - much shorter odds of a >$1M payoff than any state lottery I’m aware of.
Heck, if he took his $52 yearly investment in the lottery to the roulette table, he’d ‘only’ need to hit his number on his first three bets. He’d have odds of ‘only’ 54,871 to 1 against a $2,426,112 payday.