European gamblers buy every ticket and win Texas Lotto lottery

Last month, my (adult) son, who is clever, asked if someone could buy every possible combination of lottery ticket to ensure a win. Yeah, it's an old idea, but he hadn't heard of it before, so it was original to him. Anyway, I said yes, in theory, but I quickly ran through several logistical challenges in securing and filing 26 million (Texas Lotto) physical pieces of paper, not to mention needing the $26 million to purchase them in the first place, as well as the fact that your win would be reduced by 37% because of taxes.

Well, a group of European gamblers did indeed buy every possible combination of Texas lotto numbers (26 million at $1 each), and won the $95 million jackpot, which paid out around $58M when taken as a lump sum, so they profited by $37M. There were presumably no taxes, as most countries don't tax gambling winnings. (The U.S. is an exception.)

Most reporting was short on details on how they handled the logistics. I figured that it if took 5 seconds to enter each combination, print the ticket, and file it (and swap toner cartridges as needed), I figure that would take 4 years for one person working non-stop. They would have had to have like 500 terminals to get the job done in 72 hours. (There are 72 hours between drawings.)

And if they had 500 terminals, but did they have 500 people working the machines? At $20/hr., that’s about $1M worth of labor, well worth it, but how do you keep the workers from stealing the tickets?

Well, I found another article that said that they did get a retail outlet to order extra terminals, and they wrote an iPad program to generate QR codes so they wouldn't have to physically punch in each combination. My reading of the law is that that's not legal, only "approved" apps can be used wirelessly at a terminal, and the gamblers' app was very much DIY, but Texas officials investigated and said no laws were broken. However, they will no longer allow low-volume retailers to order extra terminals.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/surefire-lotto-texas-win-malta-exec-london-19727984.php

The Version I Heard was, they had "almost" every combination.
Also, it ran the risk of losing millions of dollars if anyone else got the six numbers as well.

Apologies if this was covered in the article, but it was behind a paywall...anyway, the game they played was Lotto Texas, which is a straightforward 6/54 lotto, which has 25,827,165 possible draws.

With only one split they still would have come out ahead. The prize was $95M as an annuity and $58M as a lump sum, so with a shared prize, each winner would get $29M.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

With only one split they still would have come out ahead. The prize was $95M as an annuity and $58M as a lump sum, so with a shared prize, each winner would get $29M.
link to original post

Aren’t there also a few million $$ in ‘second prizes’ that the syndicate would also win?

.
they may be very smart, and profited by a lot but imo they are ruining the lottery which is intended to be a fun thing for people - not a target for professional gambling organizations

without knowing I would guess that Texas is not happy about this - although they collected lots of $ from the scheme

I don't play the lottery and I won't cry myself to sleep for lottery players - just sayin

.

Bad publicity yes, and might dissuade the general public from buying tickets in the future ("What's the use?" "It's rigged!"), but for that particular lottery the state collected all the money they would usually expect PLUS whatever the syndicate put in.

And if they had not all but just "almost" every combination, as mentioned above, they could have lost outright, or if more than one other person hit the big one (three or more total winners), ended in the red.

This is one time where it worked out; mostly you read about times that it did not.

The plot thickens. Reportedly, child labor was involved in the effort.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/video-raises-questions-95-million-texas-lotto-20173069.php

Anything that discourages poor, uneducated folks from using the lottery as their retirement plan is a good thing. I hope that word it is rigged is spread far and wide.

I’m surprised that any one group would actually do this let alone pull it off. Is it +ev? Yes of course. But one mistake could cost you the whole thing. If you’re wrong I’m guessing you end up losing about 50% of your $26M in tickets. But beyond that the logistics of pulling this off are a nightmare. You have to be seriously confident that you can execute it. Start with money. Getting that level of cash would be very difficult. Then the merchant has to walk into the bank to deposit it all. Perhaps they arranged to wire the merchant’s account directly and bought tickets off the terminals against their credit. Or possibly they used debit cards directly at the machine. Which is point #2. You would have to get the lottery’s blessing. They have alerts if a mom and pop shop who sells $10k a week all of a sudden sells $100k in a day, let alone $11M. The lottery prints tickets and bills the balance against the merchants account every week. They are worried that a rogue owner or employee will suddenly run up an unpaid balance and keep the tickets. Perhaps the lottery could have been satisfied if they were using debit cards as those would go directly to the lottery. Third I don’t think it was realistic at all that these machines are printing 3 tickets a second. More like a ticket every 3 seconds. I don’t know. I could be wrong. Then there’s the logistics of the merchant actually having that many rolls from the lottery available. They would need thousands of them. I’m sure the average merchant only keeps a dozen or so in stock. Also presumably the terminals would get very hot and worked from hours of printing. Then inevitably they would break and need maintenance. Finally after you actually bought 26M tickets, you would have to go through I’m guessing about a million of them to find the magic one. I’m assuming they kept the tickets organized by terminal number and then once the winning ticket was sold they could backtrack to see which terminal sold it and look through that batch of tickets. Then after that you would need to go through all the other 26M tickets and scan every one. I’m assuming that tickets that get 3 out of 6 or 4 out of 6 pay something. These would all need to be scanned and cashed and lottery tickets are only good for 6 months or a year. But I guess they pulled it off. So kudos to them.

In other Texas Lottery news, a woman has been denied her $84 million payout because she used a courier service. That's where you buy a ticket online from a service like Jackpocket, and they send someone to a retailer to physically buy your ticket. I'm not sure there's actually anything in the rules that prohibits this. The Texas AG is supposedly worried that courier services will destroy the public's faith in the lottery—AS THOUGH NOT PAYING OUT A WINNING TICKET *WOULDN'T*!

Quote: MichaelBluejay

In other Texas Lottery news, a woman has been denied her $84 million payout because she used a courier service. That's where you buy a ticket online from a service like Jackpocket, and they send someone to a retailer to physically buy your ticket. I'm not sure there's actually anything in the rules that prohibits this. The Texas AG is supposedly worried that courier services will destroy the public's faith in the lottery—AS THOUGH NOT PAYING OUT A WINNING TICKET *WOULDN'T*!
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Selling lottery tickets across state lines was slipped into a bill bu both PA senators in the early 1990s. PA was tired of people buying tickets for other states. Note this was before lotteries unitized powerball type games.

So I would figure between that law and the wire act they can make a legal case.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

In other Texas Lottery news, a woman has been denied her $84 million payout because she used a courier service. That's where you buy a ticket online from a service like Jackpocket, and they send someone to a retailer to physically buy your ticket. I'm not sure there's actually anything in the rules that prohibits this. The Texas AG is supposedly worried that courier services will destroy the public's faith in the lottery—AS THOUGH NOT PAYING OUT A WINNING TICKET *WOULDN'T*!
link to original post

The Texas laws concerning Texas Lotto say that, while you can purchase a ticket to give as a gift, it's not particularly clear if you can pay someone to buy a ticket for you.

In theory, Jackpocket can collect the jackpot, then pay the person who paid for the ticket, but in that case, the money may end up being taxed twice.

Quote: ThatDonGuy

Quote: MichaelBluejay

In other Texas Lottery news, a woman has been denied her $84 million payout because she used a courier service. That's where you buy a ticket online from a service like Jackpocket, and they send someone to a retailer to physically buy your ticket. I'm not sure there's actually anything in the rules that prohibits this. The Texas AG is supposedly worried that courier services will destroy the public's faith in the lottery—AS THOUGH NOT PAYING OUT A WINNING TICKET *WOULDN'T*!
link to original post

The Texas laws concerning Texas Lotto say that, while you can purchase a ticket to give as a gift, it's not particularly clear if you can pay someone to buy a ticket for you.

In theory, Jackpocket can collect the jackpot, then pay the person who paid for the ticket, but in that case, the money may end up being taxed twice.
link to original post

ThatDonGuy,

So why not have Jackpocket state that it bought the ticket as a gift for Ms. Lucky? Seems like this would circumvent the "courier" question.

Dog Hand

Quote: DogHand

ThatDonGuy,

So why not have Jackpocket state that it bought the ticket as a gift for Ms. Lucky? Seems like this would circumvent the "courier" question.

Dog Hand
link to original post

Probably because the lottery would point out how, on the Jackpocket website, the company makes it clear that Ms. Lucky paid them to buy the ticket for her.

Quote: DogHand

Quote: ThatDonGuy

Quote: MichaelBluejay

In other Texas Lottery news, a woman has been denied her $84 million payout because she used a courier service. That's where you buy a ticket online from a service like Jackpocket, and they send someone to a retailer to physically buy your ticket. I'm not sure there's actually anything in the rules that prohibits this. The Texas AG is supposedly worried that courier services will destroy the public's faith in the lottery—AS THOUGH NOT PAYING OUT A WINNING TICKET *WOULDN'T*!
link to original post

The Texas laws concerning Texas Lotto say that, while you can purchase a ticket to give as a gift, it's not particularly clear if you can pay someone to buy a ticket for you.

In theory, Jackpocket can collect the jackpot, then pay the person who paid for the ticket, but in that case, the money may end up being taxed twice.
link to original post

ThatDonGuy,

So why not have Jackpocket state that it bought the ticket as a gift for Ms. Lucky? Seems like this would circumvent the "courier" question.

Dog Hand
link to original post

It's sad that I have to say this, but some people just have integrity and won't participate in fraud.

A Texas state senator feels she was cheated on her lotto ticket purchase because the European gamblers bought every combination, despite the fact that her ticket was a NON-winning combination and would have lost whether the Europeans bought every combo or not. She's demanding a refund of her ticket purchase.

These are the people making laws.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/texas-lottery-cash-repayment-law-20216276.php

Quote: MichaelBluejay

A Texas state senator feels she was cheated on her lotto ticket purchase because the European gamblers bought every combination, despite the fact that her ticket was a NON-winning combination and would have lost whether the Europeans bought every combo or not. She's demanding a refund of her ticket purchase.

These are the people making laws.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/texas-lottery-cash-repayment-law-20216276.php
link to original post

At the least participate in fraud and give us a non pay walled link

Who actually pays for news?

Geez, you could use Google.

Here's a relevant quote from the clueless lawmaker from another source:

Quote: Texas Scorecard

“You’re taking the public money, and you’re letting a few people come in and scam the public. You know normally … we’d put them in prison. I lost money, and I want my money back,” she later added.

https://texasscorecard.com/state/state-representative-to-texas-lottery-director-i-want-my-money-back/

It never ends. The player who won the $7.5M jackpot following the European syndicate's win, is suing Texas because he says the Europeans shouldn't have been able to buy every ticket, and if they hadn't, and nobody else won, the jackpot would have rolled over and the man would have won around $100M, not "only" $7.5M.

Discuss.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/lifestyle/article/texas-lottery-lawsuit-20266668.php

Quote: MichaelBluejay

It never ends. The player who won the $7.5M jackpot following the European syndicate's win, is suing Texas because he says the Europeans shouldn't have been able to buy every ticket, and if they hadn't, and nobody else won, the jackpot would have rolled over and the man would have won around $100M, not "only" $7.5M.

Discuss.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/lifestyle/article/texas-lottery-lawsuit-20266668.php
link to original post

Dieter: Exactly what I was thinking.

Besides, I'm not yet convinced that the Europeans' win was improper anyway.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Dieter: Exactly what I was thinking.

Besides, I'm not yet convinced that the Europeans' win was improper anyway.
link to original post

Purchasing a ticket through a runner seems to be the point of contention. I'm reasonably sure that if a syndicate representative showed up in person to buy the ticket, it couldn't be disputed - even if they're from Illinois or India.

At that point, if I ask my colleague to pick me up a couple scratchers when he goes to get taquitos and a White Owl, am I in trouble if I win a major prize?

Were couriers/runners really involved? My understanding is that the syndicate owned or partnered with a retailer, had the retailer order a gazillion extra lottery terminals (which the TX Lottery Commission furnished without batting an eye), then the syndicate printed (or had the retailer print) all the tickets.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

It never ends. The player who won the $7.5M jackpot following the European syndicate's win, is suing Texas because he says the Europeans shouldn't have been able to buy every ticket, and if they hadn't, and nobody else won, the jackpot would have rolled over and the man would have won around $100M, not "only" $7.5M.

Discuss.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/lifestyle/article/texas-lottery-lawsuit-20266668.php
link to original post

I can wreck that claim with one observation. That lotto game is drawn 3 times a week. So there had to be at least 10 drawings between the drawing the Europeans won and the one this plaintiff won, according to the dates given.

There may have been no winners in that period, but that is in part due to the fact that the lower jackpot attracted fewer players, and there may well have been winners if the jackpot was over $100M with the expected increased ticket sales. Thus regardless of the legality of the European syndicate's actions, this plaintiff can't prove he personally was deprived of anything.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Were couriers/runners really involved? My understanding is that the syndicate owned or partnered with a retailer, had the retailer order a gazillion extra lottery terminals (which the TX Lottery Commission furnished without batting an eye), then the syndicate printed (or had the retailer print) all the tickets.
link to original post

Quote: The Linked Article

and carried out by four online ticket sales companies.

(heavily truncated)

I may have my terminology wrong. Are those online ticket sales companies authorized lottery retailers?

Another article (sorry, the link slipped away) suggested that lottery.com was one of the services used to acquire the tickets.

Lottery.com's website says under the terms of service that they are NOT a lottery retailer, they are a concierge service that takes ticket orders, then acquires the tickets for the clients. That classes them as a runner in my book, but I suppose a different terminology may be more appropriate.

Quote: ThatDonGuy

Quote: MichaelBluejay

In other Texas Lottery news, a woman has been denied her $84 million payout because she used a courier service. That's where you buy a ticket online from a service like Jackpocket, and they send someone to a retailer to physically buy your ticket. I'm not sure there's actually anything in the rules that prohibits this. The Texas AG is supposedly worried that courier services will destroy the public's faith in the lottery—AS THOUGH NOT PAYING OUT A WINNING TICKET *WOULDN'T*!
link to original post

The Texas laws concerning Texas Lotto say that, while you can purchase a ticket to give as a gift, it's not particularly clear if you can pay someone to buy a ticket for you.

In theory, Jackpocket can collect the jackpot, then pay the person who paid for the ticket, but in that case, the money may end up being taxed twice.
link to original post

Hmm. So I can't say something like,"Hey Bill, I have Zelled you $2. Can you please play 23, 32,33, 40,45, and 50 for me in Florida Lotto today? I am stuck doing overtime at work and you are already going to the gas station. 💡🤔

Dieter, you're conflating two different cases:

(1) The Europeans bought every number directly, no courier service. What courier service could handle 25 million tickets?! And why would the Europeans want to pay the courier surcharge?

(2) In a separate case, a player bought ten tickets through the Jackpocket app, a courier service.

Texas politicians are wringing their hands over both cases, so both cases tend to be reported on in the same article.

Texas legislators are typically clueless, as per a post above. In the NYT article below, a TX legislator called it a "fraud". They're moving to ban both the buy-every-ticket strategy *and* courier services. The former is kind of plausible, the latter is definitely not. It's actually a stupid move, because Jackpocket drove LOTS of sales, benefitting the state, so Texas is shooting themselves in the foot on this one. But of course, because, Texas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/texas-lottery-system-investigation.html

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Dieter, you're conflating two different cases:

(1) The Europeans bought every number directly, no courier service. What courier service could handle 25 million tickets?! And why would the Europeans want to pay the courier surcharge?

(2) In a separate case, a player bought ten tickets through the Jackpocket app, a courier service.

Texas politicians are wringing their hands over both cases, so both cases tend to be reported on in the same article.

Texas legislators are typically clueless, as per a post above. In the NYT article below, a TX legislator called it a "fraud". They're moving to ban both the buy-every-ticket strategy *and* courier services. The former is kind of plausible, the latter is definitely not. It's actually a stupid move, because Jackpocket drove LOTS of sales, benefitting the state, so Texas is shooting themselves in the foot on this one. But of course, because, Texas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/texas-lottery-system-investigation.html
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Me, getting details confused? I can believe it.

Clearly, the ticket buy is larger than one person can effect. Does the syndicate send a few dozen smurfs over to do the play? Does the syndicate have enough smurfs they trust with a million dollars? How do they get the money into play, given AML protocols?

At some point, the practical realities make hiring a concierge service that already has all that worked out look pretty good.

As for limiting the tickets purchased... that's an interesting thought experiment. How do you let all* 31 million Texans buy their favorite numbers, but keep the ticket sales usefully under the 54c6 (25.8m) limit?

Quote: Dieter

The courier service is *not* set up to buy every combo! Even if they could, a 30% surcharge on each ticket would have been $7.5M extra in expenses!

Like I said, the syndicate ordered a bunch of extra terminals, and got lots of people to ring up the tickets. The details are in the articles.

Quote: Dieter

As for limiting the tickets purchased... that's an interesting thought experiment. How do you let all* 31 million Texans buy their favorite numbers, but keep the ticket sales usefully under the 54c6 (25.8m) limit?

There is no talk about that kind of limit, just that they want to limit a person/entity from buying every combo.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Quote: Dieter

The courier service is *not* set up to buy every combo! Even if they could, a 30% surcharge on each ticket would have been $7.5M extra in expenses!

Like I said, the syndicate ordered a bunch of extra terminals, and got lots of people to ring up the tickets. The details are in the articles.

Quote: Dieter

As for limiting the tickets purchased... that's an interesting thought experiment. How do you let all* 31 million Texans buy their favorite numbers, but keep the ticket sales usefully under the 54c6 (25.8m) limit?

There is no talk about that kind of limit, just that they want to limit a person/entity from buying every combo.
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Yowza... 30% vig? Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

I don't see how you can restrict one entity from buying all the tickets unless you restrict every retail terminal. It's not like all the smurfs wear a uniform and say the secret catchphrase "I'm smurfing lotto tickets for Team Edward" when they go to the corner store.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

There is no talk about that kind of limit, just that they want to limit a person/entity from buying every combo.
link to original post

Dumb thing for them to try to do with regulation. They would be better off defining the lottery as a MHB so it never goes potential +EV due to a progressive jackpot. In the old days that might have been impossible but now they should know all the numbers that have been sold before the drawing, so if there's not a winner when they are done picking numbers, draw another number. Shouldn't take long.

Quote: Dieter

I don't see how you can restrict one entity from buying all the tickets unless you restrict every retail terminal. It's not like all the smurfs wear a uniform and say the secret catchphrase "I'm smurfing lotto tickets for Team Edward" when they go to the corner store. link to original post

I keep explaining, here it is again: THEY ORDERED A GAZILLION TERMINALS AND THE LOTTERY COMMISSION SUPPLIED THEM WITHOUT BATTING AN EYE.

You CANNOT print TWENTY-FIVE MILLION TICKETS unless you have a bunch of terminals.

It is EASY to prevent an entity from printing 25 million tickets. You simply decline to supply them with a gazillion terminals.

Quote: Dieter

Yowza... 30% vig? Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

I was estimating. I looked it up, it's 10-14%. Whatever it is, (1) Jackpocket was not set up to supply 25 million unique tickets, and (2) even if they were, the syndicate saved multiple millions of dollars by DIYing the operation.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Dumb thing for them to try to do with regulation. [banning the purchase of every combo] They would be better off defining the lottery as a MHB so it never goes potential +EV due to a progressive jackpot. link to original post

I can't agree with this. First of all, they don't "ban" the purchase of every combo so much as they just decline to supply the gazillion terminals necessary to *print* every combo. Second, right or wrong (and it's mostly wrong), players feel that the syndicate's buying of every combo was akin to "rigging" the game, and the players feel cheated. See above for the Texas legislator's statement: "I want my money back." Players lose faith in the lottery, they stop playing.

Second, it's well established that higher jackpots drive ticket purchases. When Powerball or Megamillions is around $20 million, ticket sales are slow. When it goes up to a billion, the tickets fly off the shelves. Ending the progressive jackpot could decimate ticket sales. It's *possible* a MHB-style lotto jackpot would also induce sales, but I doubt it. Some state would have to try it before we'd know for sure.

This is an easy one for me. If someone is going to buy a ticket I want to make it as easy as possible for them. If someone says ‘here is my $100,000,000 (or whatever the number is ) and I want every combination’ I’d make it so they can push one button to make it so. Without the need to kill a few dozen trees to actually print them up. This ‘might’ actually discourage the activity because now that it’s easy you’d have to worry about another entity doing the same thing.
I’d allow couriers, friends, ANYONE to buy a ticket and give it to someone else. I’d allow enterprises like Jackpocket as well. Heck, I’d encourage them. Let me sell tickets to as many Rwandans who have a computer and money.

I like the idea of a rule change so that when the jackpot reaches a certain value (less than the +EV value of buying all combinations), after the lottery draws its numbers, if no one wins, then draw another number. Or throw them in the trash and re-draw. Something to guarantee a winner.

When the jackpot is large and people know that someone is guaranteed to win, ticket sales will go even higher.

Even better would be not to rip off people (mostly stupid people) with a lottery to begin with, but if the state must operate a lottery to fund their spending without raising taxes, this would be the way to do it.

Quote: KevinAA

Even better would be not to rip off people (mostly stupid people) with a lottery to begin with... link to original post

Is bowling stupid? Are the movies stupid? How you decide exactly which exchanges of money for entertainment are valid and which are "stupid"? Because you seem to know a lot about this.

Quote: MichaelBluejay

Quote: KevinAA

Even better would be not to rip off people (mostly stupid people) with a lottery to begin with... link to original post

Is bowling stupid? Are the movies stupid? How you decide exactly which exchanges of money for entertainment are valid and which are "stupid"? Because you seem to know a lot about this.
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It's my opinion, I'm entitled to my opinion, and I don't appreciate your attack.

If lottery players were smart, they would never play games with an outrageous 50% house edge. But they play it anyway because they're stupid.

Quote: KevinAA

...I don't appreciate your attack.

Attack?! That's more than a tad hypocritical, since you literally just called me stupid.

Quote: KevinAA

If lottery players were smart, they would never play games with an outrageous 50% house edge. But they play it anyway because they're stupid.

Quote: KevinAA

It's my opinion, I'm entitled to my opinion...

Yeah, but opinions are supposed to be informed, and yours is not, since you missed the whole point of my examples. I'll spell it out again: You’re evaluating lotto entertainment by looking at only the mathematical house edge, which is only one way to evaluate value, and in the case of lotto games, a particularly poor one. A better way to evaluate lotto games is to look at the intangible benefit (entertainment value) that you get out of it. For a lot of people, the thrill of the chance to win millions of dollars is worth a dollar, just like how the pleasure of seeing a movie might be worth $12.

Besides that, house edge is useful to compare casino table games, because they're played for lots of rounds and have low volatility (after just a couple hundred rounds your actual results will likely be close to the mathematical expected value), but from a player perspective, house edge is all but useless for lotto games, since a player typically plays a small number of rounds (tickets), and even if they bought a million tickets, their actual results wouldn't even be in the same ballpark as expected results.

You've hitched yourself to the house edge wagon, as though it's the only thing that matters, when in the case of lotto games, it actually scarcely matters at all.

I have a whole article explaining why house edge is the wrong way to evaluate lotto games.

It is my opinion that playing the lottery is stupid. It's okay if you don't agree with it, although it would be nice if you would stop calling me ill-informed. Ill-informed and "I don't agree" are not the same.

If casinos depended on low-income degenerate gamblers to keep their doors open, I would be just as much anti-casino as I am anti-lottery. They do not. They need high rollers to have nice amenities, or a decent volume of average players to have average amenities (things like nice carpeting, HVAC systems, lighting, good restaurant options, etc.) They do not need low-income degenerates to keep their doors open.

The state lottery, on the other hand, depends on low-income degenerate gamblers to bring in the big bucks. States do not make billions of dollars from people who buy one lotto ticket a year. States do not make billions of dollars from degenerate gamblers of means, because those people blow their money on high stakes sports betting, blackjack, baccarat, slot machines, etc. Their money lasts much longer because of the low house edge of any casino game compared to lottery tickets. Even the worst of those games -- slot machines -- come with enough comps to cover your housing and food needs, which the state lottery does not offer.

The reason why it is solely the state lottery that gets low-income degenerate gamblers to patronize them by such a large margin is because their daily wasteful spend of $20 or so has no chance of winning millions of dollars in a casino. The low-income degenerate gamblers desperate to become rich want to turn their daily gambling budget of $20 into millions of dollars, and the state is happy to sell them that dream, and for that I deride both the state for offering it and the players for falling for it.

When I was 18 years old, I worked in a convenience store in Texas at the time the state created their lottery. We sold $1 scratch-off tickets. While there were a few people who bought just one, the average was about 5. That would be worth $12 today adjusted for inflation. Your argument in your article "it's only a dollar" sounds like lotto advertising.

What's really sad, and why I've said the lottery was only for stupid people every single day since then, is that while I worked there (a bit less than a year), not one person took the cash from a winning lottery ticket. NOT ONE!!! Every single one of them -- 100% -- exchanged them for MORE lottery tickets. I guess I was just unlucky and didn't get to process the one in a thousand people who actually wanted their winnings.

I was given one of these tickets from my manager after a particularly busy day as a way to say "thank you". When I got home, I scratched it off and saw I had won $2. I took it to a convenience store, gave it to the clerk, and he looked at me like I had two heads when I didn't say "two more tickets". After all this silence, I said "can I have my two dollars?" and he said "okay" and handed me two dollars, still with that totally confused look, as if he wasn't sure how to process a transaction at the cash register for negative $2 because it had never happened to him before.

That is what your article is missing -- that you are assuming that no one ever plays just one round of roulette or one hand of blackjack (it's uncommon but it does happen) -- but more importantly, you are assuming that no one ever uses lottery ticket wins to buy more tickets. They almost always do. Virtually 100% of the time. That was the case back in 1991, and that is still the case today.

I buy 2 lotto tix when the prize is huge.
It's a social thing chatting with friends/co workers what if you won.
2 tix so I can add to the discussion with why 2.


If the game is mega millions, there's a jackpot only special where 2 tix cost $3 instead of $4. (Only some states allow this)
The catch is that you don't win on any other prize.
For all the years mm has been offering this, no one has won it via this gimmick. (Not surprised)
But I save $1 on entertainment with people I know

I read an article that said with $30M, you can handle anything financial that life throws at you. (But I Can't find that article again)

So I did the math on when to buy lotto to have $30m take home.
Assume 40% taxes. $30m/.6 is $50m.
But the prize advertised by lotto is an annuity. Taking lump sum is around 1/2 So $100m advertised prize needed.
(Thus the $ you keep is roughly 1/3 the advertised prize)

If I were to do this, I would buy at $95M.
That way I get slightly less noticed by the press by only winning 8 figures instead of a 9 figure advertised prize.
Also, if I don't win then I won't buy again because the prize will now be 9 figures.
So a stopping point is built in to my plan.
(Yes, I was bored that day. Lol )

Edit:
I would only do mega millions because of the $3 jackpot only special.
When I reach the first number that doesn't match then I stop wasting my time immediately and throw away the ticket even if it's the first number I checked 😜

Quote: 100xOdds

I read an article that said with $30M, you can handle anything financial that life throws at you…
link to original post

[largely truncated]

Possibly, unless you run through a string of bad marriages without any prenups!

$30M
$15M
$7.5M
<$4M
<$2M
<$1M

It would only take 5 such marriages to not be a millionaire anymore…

Quote: 100xOdds

I buy 2 lotto tix when the prize is huge.
It's a social thing chatting with friends/co workers what if you won.
2 tix so I can add to the discussion with why 2.

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Cuts your odds in half.
A 3rd dollar isn't as bang for the buck because it doesn't lower the odds nearly as much

If the game is mega millions, there's a jackpot only special where 2 tix cost $3 instead of $4. (Only some states allow this)
The catch is that you don't win on any other prize.
For all the years mm has been offering this, no one has won it via this gimmick. (Not surprised)
But I save $1 on entertainment with people I know
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The jackpot-only special is gone with the new Megamillions rules. Now the tickets cost $5 and include a multiplier for lower prizes.

Powerball is $2 except in Idaho and Montana where the $1 extra for the multiplier is mandatory.