A question about lotteries.

My state doesn't have a lottery, so I don't know how they have their payout rules written, but what would happen in this scenario?

A man buys a lottery ticket and misplaces so he goes out and buys another one with the same numbers. Later he finds the first ticket so now he has two tickets with the same numbers. His numbers win and there's someone else who picked them too, so there are now three winning tickets.

Does the man with two winning tickets get paid 1/2 of the jackpot or is he entitled to 2/3?

I know he could give the extra ticket to someone else and let them make a claim on his behalf, but my question is, are jackpots divided by ticket or ticket-holder?

Do lotteries have rules written expressly for a situation like this? Granted, it's highly unlikely that this would happen, but it's possible.

Quote: tsmith

Does the man with two winning tickets get paid 1/2 of the jackpot or is he entitled to 2/3?

The latter.

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I know he could give the extra ticket to someone else and let them make a claim on his behalf

Exactly

If someone did a quickpick 2 times and happened to get the same numbers, you think 1 of the tickets might be invalid?

Quote: tsmith

My state doesn't have a lottery.

You are so lucky. Perhaps the retail merchants don't have a strong lobby in the state capital. Or do the Churches that run Bingo Games have too strong a lobby to allow the State to bleed the poor also?

Quote: tsmith

Do lotteries have rules written expressly for a situation like this? Granted, it's highly unlikely that this would happen, but it's possible.

Not that unlikely. I've known people who buy two or more sets of their regular numbers in case there is another winner, especially when the jackpot really gets big. as far as I know, no lottery has a rule against it.

But if you show up with ten winning tickets, it would look suspicious.

Lottery tickets are bearer instruments. If you have two winners, you are entitled to two shares of the prize.

Of course, the lottery commission may question it, and may think there's some kind of fraud going on, but that's a separate issue...

Quote: dm

If someone did a quickpick 2 times and happened to get the same numbers, you think 1 of the tickets might be invalid?

No. But if you discover the error before leaving the store, you can have one voided / refunded.

If three winning tickets exist, each winner gets paid 1/3 of the prize. This would happen whether or not all three tickets were presented and the respective prizes claimed. So after a certain period of time, the unclaimed funds would revert to the state, either to be rolled back into a subsequent prize pool, or to be used to throw an immense honkin' megaparty for the state legislature, depending on state law and whim. And the guy who lost his ticket would have to cope with the existential torment of winning only $6 million instead of $12 million.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Lottery tickets are bearer instruments. If you have two winners, you are entitled to two shares of the prize.

Of course, the lottery commission may question it, and may think there's some kind of fraud going on, but that's a separate issue...


No. But if you discover the error before leaving the store, you can have one voided / refunded.

I'm not sure why you refer to it as an error. Multiple winners are allowed, so it's not like each entry has to be unique.

Quote: FleaStiff

You are so lucky. Perhaps the retail merchants don't have a strong lobby in the state capital. Or do the Churches that run Bingo Games have too strong a lobby to allow the State to bleed the poor also?

It's the churches. I'm in Alabama. We're surrounded by lotteries in Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and Mississippi has the casinos, but we have nothing. A couple of Indian bingo casinos and that's it, and the Baptists aren't happy about them either, but there's nothing they (the churches) can do about them.

I lived in NY for many years and can count on one hand the number of times I ever played the lottery, so I don't care that we don't have one, I was just curious about how they work.

Quote: dm

I'm not sure why you refer to it as an error. Multiple winners are allowed, so it's not like each entry has to be unique.

You're right. "Error" was a poor choice of word.

For what it's worth, in NJ and NY (and presumably everywhere), if there is an error on non-quickpicks, either the numbers were entered rong, or the 'bingo' card was scanned wrong, you can get them refunded before you leave the store. (Note: "Bingo card" IS the industry standard nickname for those cards.)

I have to assume that, as unlikely that it is, if two quick picks produce the same numbers, you can return one and get a new quick pick - if discovered before you leave the store.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

For what it's worth, in NJ and NY (and presumably everywhere), if there is an error on non-quickpicks, either the numbers were entered rong, or the 'bingo' card was scanned wrong, you can get them refunded before you leave the store. (Note: "Bingo card" IS the industry standard nickname for those cards.)

You can do that in Mexico, too. But if so then the tickets are cancelled and don't play in the drawing.

These days they use an optical scanner with an online connection to a server, so the ticket isn't printed until after it's registered by the lotto's computers. But in the old days they used punch cards, which had to be physically delivered to the lotto's offices and then scanned in time. Some cards colnd't be scanned (hanging chads and such), and some possibly weren't scanned in time. Each week you could ask an agent for a list of cancelled tickets. If yours was in it (the punch cards were numbered), you got a refund.

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I have to assume that, as unlikely that it is, if two quick picks produce the same numbers, you can return one and get a new quick pick - if discovered before you leave the store.

I think it's a little less likely than to have a number hit the jackpot, given that the RNG isn't really random.

I also wonder, when you have multiple winners how many of them used a quick pick?

You know, I enjoy lotto more as an intellectual exercise.