<p>Well, I won $2… and that is exactly what I spent on tickets. Broke even. No free grad school for D2, too bad!</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>But think of the thrill of possibilities and dreams you had for that $40. Me, I just have the $40.</p>
<p>Glad…When you put it that way…lol…</p>
<p>I think I will spend less next time. :)</p>
<p>Intparent…you received the gambler’s wish, “Please let me break even”. :)</p>
<p>^^ $1 buys the possibilities and dreams and keeps you in the same odds range as spending $40 or $100 or $1000 (all still way less than 1/100 of 1% of a chance of winning).</p>
<p>That’s true.</p>
<p>I will probably buy 10 to 20 the next time the jackpot is huge and slowly work myself into buying zero. :)</p>
<p>Well, dstark, obviously MY wish was for something more than breaking even… but I will take it. 
Question is whether I will turn around and buy 2 more tickets with that $2 when I cash in my winner!</p>
<p>I felt such joy and relief when the winning numbers were not remotely close to the numbers I would have chosen had I participated.</p>
<p>How do you win $2? I know I didn’t get the full monty, but I had a few of the numbers. Does being close count? :)</p>
<p>How’d the CC people do? Anybody’s magical thinking come true for them? No? Oh well, you can always try again next time. Maybe Bullwinkle will finally pull the rabbit out of his hat.</p>
<p>Hard to believe we are some of the same people who sometimes discourage kids from wasting their time and money applying to long shot reach schools. However low they might be, their chances of getting into Harvard are FAR greater than our chances of winning the lotto jackpot.</p>
<p>coureur - try not to be such a spoil sport about it. Seems to me most of us (on CC) who bought tickets spent between $10 and $50…not thousands or even hundreds. :)</p>
<p>I’m glad I played my $10 and would have danced a jig had I won even a small amount. $10 would buy me 2 1/2 gallons of gasoline. Or 5 quarts of skim milk. Or 4 quarts of soy milk. None of those would truly enhance my life. A few thousand bucks would have though!</p>
<p>limabeans: there are several ways to win a few bucks. If you have the MB, you win. If you have the MB in combination with any of the other numbers, you win. If you don’t have the MB, you need to have 3 numbers to win. I don’t know the exact amounts, but you can find it online. </p>
<p>We had no more than 2 numbers and didn’t have the MB, so none of our tickets won anything.</p>
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<p>I heard an interview with a Texas State Lottery official this morning and it went over some rough figures for the lottery. THey were: roughly 50% paid out in prizes; 12.5% overhead and operating expenses; the remaining 38.5% retained by the states, and used in various ways depending on the specific state. </p>
<p>So, the answer to the implied question is that the expected value is -50%, assuming that those numbers are about right.</p>
<p>Its always a little hard to come up with accurate actual numbers because the lottery advertises their prizes based on undiscounted future payouts. If this were done in the investment business, you’d be in violation of some law for misleading people, but its alright if governments do it. :)</p>
<p>More spoil-sport thoughts for dstark - </p>
<p>Out of all the tickets purchased by all the purchasers in populous states like California, New York, and Texas (plus many others) COMBINED, not a single one had the jackpot combo of numbers on it. Think about how many number combinations that must be.</p>
<p>… and people think that somehow buying $5, $10, $100, or $1000 worth of tickets will somehow put them in a much better position to win!? I don’t understand this mentality.</p>
<p>I do understand buying ‘a ticket’, i.e. a single one, to have a hand in the excitement and at least a chance of winning - I don’t understand standing in a long line to buy a ticket (as I saw on the news) or buying multiple tickets with the thoughts that the chances go up significantly. There are a lot of statistics impaired people around. </p>
<p>The sad part is that there were probably a lot of people, including people who don’t really have a spare $20 or $50, who lined up to buy as many as they could with a sincere thought that they had a pretty decent shot at winning if only they buy $100 worth (or whatever). I’ve actually known some people like this and I thought it was sad. Those people really didn’t want to hear my statistical logic and preferred to continue their fantasy thoughts. Note - I’m not talking about anyone here on cc and especially not dstark.</p>
<p>Well…I have a side bet…</p>
<p>I hope that is ok…</p>
<p>If there are 3 or 4 winning tickets…
I win…</p>
<p>Right now…I read 3 winners… </p>
<p>The reason why some of us buy multiple tickets is because reading one line and seeing if the numbers match isn’t as much fun as reading multiple lines.</p>
<p>It is kind of like getting a present…the anticipation and the opening up of the present can be fun. Sometimes…the actual present is a dud.</p>
<p>I don’t know anybody who played that actually thought they were going
to win. I am sure there are a few people out there, but I don’t know them.</p>
<p>I do know that there were a group of 30 actuaries that pooled some
money and bought tickets. I am pretty sure they did not think they were going to win. ;)</p>
<p>Just for the record…I thought the odds of winning were extremely low…negligible. Pretty much zero.</p>
<p>And I did not care. :)</p>
<p>There were 3 big winners; one of them was right down the road from me about 15 minutes away!</p>
<p>My sister was telling me a story she heard about a guy who had just been laid off and went and spent his entire last check on lottery tickets! Umm… yeah not smart!</p>
<p>Jeez–coureur–never thought of you as such a killjoy. And if I recall correctly, you sent some young folks to lottery schools. (I’m defending ticket buying when I didn’t even buy one…:)).</p>
<p>Yesterday on the news they reported that the average person making < $13,000 spends ~$700 in a year on lottery tickets. That blows my mind. 9% of yearly income for someone who must have almost no disposable income.</p>
<p>H bought $3 worth and didn’t match any numbers. Sigh…back to work.</p>
<p>Gladgraddad–Yeah, I don’t get the people who are sure they are going to win if only they buy more tickets.</p>
<p>Post #113. That is great news, nobody won. We(Californians) have a chance to go at it again. 
I paid for the lunch and my friend called and said she paid for $2 tickets.</p>
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<p>This is completely irrational, but I suspect many in our office pool play because the thought of the rest of the group winning while being left out is a lot worse than the couple of bucks it costs to be in. A friend of mine did just that in an overseas lottery and lost several hundred grand and still talks about it.</p>
<p>A friend of yours lost several hundred grand?</p>