@DrWorm Odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302.5 million. Each ticket cost $2. So in theory it could cost up to $605 million to win the jackpot. So as long as it’s over that it’s an “investment”.
Obviously this ignores previous losses, smaller prizes that can be won…but I’m not a lottery fan, but that’s the point where I can justify it.
Honestly if it was 600 million I would probably still by a ticket…because whats life without a bit of whimsy.
All employees last Friday where I work threw $10 each into a pot…15 employees, $150, $3 per draw=50 draws. Our “winning” yield was $42.
We reinvested the $42 and we had 11 employees who threw $10 each in again, and being the nice guy that I am, I pitched in another buck to even the investment to $153, or 51 draws. Our “winning” yield this time was $30!!
Time will tell, but with our luck so far, it should only take another 4 or 5 nights and we’ll all be completely broke!!
@tohar1
I ran our work pool this time; $4 each x 8 entrants made for 16 tickets and we won $10, so we have 5 tickets in the next drawing. I’ll be curious to see if the half-billion cash option will get any more people into the pool
@RiotDemon We’d miss you but thoroughly understand.
My wife and I would go the secret route, set up a trust with some layers of legal obfuscation, and just shut the hell up until we could move and mostly disappear.
@mfladd@RiotDemon@duodec I would negotiate with the powers at meh HQ and sponsor the most extreme mehrathon in history. Then I would skulk away in a cloud of anonymity.
@duodec yep. I would not want to be on the news. I remember a story fairly recently where someone wanted to stay anonymous but they signed their winning lottery ticket. To set up a trust, that was a big no no.
@RiotDemon “Do a handstand and click on all the images of 15th century Croatian poets”. But the item would be a Tesla Model S or iPhone Xs Max or some such.
@RiotDemon I had a message board buddy I used to trade live shows (cd trading) back in the day. One day he hit big on the lottery. Never returned to the boards… Except six months later to message me saying I was cool and that he was disappearing from the site going forward.
@macromeh@medz The trouble is… even buying dozens or hundreds of tickets, the chance of winning (while not zero) is still vanishingly small.
It’s a really poor use of funds as an investment.
As entertainment:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@compunaut@medz My disappointment for buying a ticket and not winning (the most likely outcome, by a huge margin) is much higher than my disappointment for not winning because I didn’t bother to buy a ticket.
I’ve stayed away from megamillions since they changed the numbers scheme years ago but for this I’m in. Work can’t agree on a group buy, so we dropped $20 on tickets
I already had a mega millions ticket and just replaced my loser power ball from last night with a new one. I already know I will likely match exactly zero numbers. It’s a total losers’ game. I’m a loser.
I have 3 or 4 unchecked tickets from various lotteries over the last few months in a shoe box of other random stuff I’ll eventually deal with. There’s a megamillions from the last draw and one for the next draw stashed in my phone case. I only ever buy quick picks and only one at a time. I never check them punctually. I’ve never won money from a draw game but I’m pretty close to breaking even on scratchers.
Sure it’s a waste of money, but I’ve spent more on Fukos this year than lottery tickets, so…
The thing that bothers me the most about state-sponsored gambling is that it is promoted as providing money for various popular causes like schools and wildlife preservation when in reality, there is little if any incremental benefit to those programs because the lottery money just offsets other tax revenue that is then free for the politicians to spend on their favorite boondoggles.
(Sorry for the Debbie Downer moment. wah-wah)
@macromeh welcome to illannoy. That’s just standard operating procedure, like the tollway fees that were supposed to go away eventually (and instead keep getting ratcheted up, and doubled if you actually try to use cash to pay them) and the ‘temporary’ income tax increases that always become permanent. Its never enough.
The Spouse is going to go stand in line tomorrow and get two tickets. I’m willing to drop a couple of bucks on it. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky again: in 1994 I matched 5 out of 6 and won $1700. I haven’t been able to match even two numbers since then, though.
Well the imaginary money I spend on an imaginary ticket had no numbers match. This is a win as I didn’t put a match to a real dollar buying a real ticket.
I got $4 back on the first ticket from the 670M draw. Zero back on the $20 worth of tickets for this draw.
However we’re going to do it again anyway. And this time the office is almost certainly going to do a pool ticket also (with photocopies so there’s no question on personal vs pool tickets).
The dream is worth a minor monetary sacrifice. Just think; unless too many winning tickets are sold you’d be getting many times the dollars that @snapster sold Woot! to Amazon for, which led to Mediocre and Meh… Imagine what new levels of ‘whatever…’ what you could do in comparison!
Well, in for another $20. 10 QPs because I don’t want responsibility for picking losers. Or I’m too lazy. Fielder’s Choice, because either way, I’m out.
At least the return is better than my costs to maintain this useless VMP badge. Can’t even get a VMP shirt to show for it.
I never buy lottery tickets with the intention of winning anything because, math (and reality).
But, whenever there is a group buy at work, I always buy in. I figure it is worth a couple of bucks to not have to hear people say “I told you so.” I think of these payments as insurance premiums for “I told you so insurance”. Plus, I’m not the person wasting time waiting on line.
Yesterday is the first time in quite a while that there was a group buy. With both MegaMillions and PowerBall, the insurance premium doubled to $4.
“You gotta be in it to win it!” is true, but so is “The odds are about the same whether you are in it or not!”
One time, maybe five years ago, when the group was about 20 people, we did win $42. Saved me an insurance payment. Another time, we won $8… that just got us some extra tickets.
@baqui63 This. Do not want to be the ‘odd man out’ left behind when everyone else boogies. We even have an understanding about if a person is out of office, on vacation, whatever. We chip in the extra $1 or $2 and let them know. If they pay it back when they’re back in the office then we’ll do it again next time. Insurance is a good say of looking at it, and even when I was an hourly newbie at my first job, a buck or two now and again was feasible.
I can buy a MegaMillions ticket or I can buy fidget spinners. I’m a loser either way. I’ll get both. If I win MegaMillions I’ll buy new batteries for everyone’s fidget spinners.
Lottery winners whose luck ran out (DESLIDED)
Nope, but I sold some.
When I bought my 10 losing numbers, they gave me 2 bonus losing numbers. Wheee!
I’ll wait for Friday.
I bought 3 tickets, 18 different numbers…matched a total of 0 numbers.
I buy any time the jackpot gets over 605 million for the mega millions.
@MrMark I know next to nothing about the lotteries, so I am guessing “over 605 million” isn’t as weirdly arbitrary as it sounds?
@DrWorm Odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302.5 million. Each ticket cost $2. So in theory it could cost up to $605 million to win the jackpot. So as long as it’s over that it’s an “investment”.
Obviously this ignores previous losses, smaller prizes that can be won…but I’m not a lottery fan, but that’s the point where I can justify it.
Honestly if it was 600 million I would probably still by a ticket…because whats life without a bit of whimsy.
@DrWorm @MrMark That plan may work as long as no one else does the same thing…
@daveinwarsh As long as we started this plan on different days, we should be good.
That’s how math and probability works, I’m sure if it.
@MrMark Boy does the IRS have some news for you, pal. :V
@ShotgunX Not if I invest all my winnings back in to gambling. Then I can use the losses to offset my winnings!
It’s going to be a fun 3 months in Vegas.
@MrMark Matched 1 this time. Only 5 more to go. Getting close.
I bought 1 and got $20.
@Cythwulf I bought 1 & haven’t checked it yet…
@daveinwarsh Sorry Dave, but you didn’t win the big prize…
/giphy big prize
@therealjrn SPOILER!
@daveinwarsh Oh so sorry.
/giphy SPOILER ALERT
All employees last Friday where I work threw $10 each into a pot…15 employees, $150, $3 per draw=50 draws. Our “winning” yield was $42.
We reinvested the $42 and we had 11 employees who threw $10 each in again, and being the nice guy that I am, I pitched in another buck to even the investment to $153, or 51 draws. Our “winning” yield this time was $30!!
Time will tell, but with our luck so far, it should only take another 4 or 5 nights and we’ll all be completely broke!!
@tohar1
I ran our work pool this time; $4 each x 8 entrants made for 16 tickets and we won $10, so we have 5 tickets in the next drawing. I’ll be curious to see if the half-billion cash option will get any more people into the pool
Nope. Matched 0 numbers.
At least that goes with the $0 I spent on it?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@narfcake You can’t lose if you don’t ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶ gamble.
I won a ticket that matched 0 numbers but some of those numbers were close to the actual numbers so…win?
@speediedelivery
/giphy so close
I now have my one quick pick ticket - it’s mine, bitches!
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/17/if-you-win-the-mega-millions-jackpot-heres-how-to-maintain-some-privacy.html
I’ll just disappear. I’d help my immediate family and a few friends, but I’ll fall off the face of the Earth.
@RiotDemon
@mfladd if you get a cryptic letter in the mail, it might be from me!
@RiotDemon We’d miss you but thoroughly understand.
My wife and I would go the secret route, set up a trust with some layers of legal obfuscation, and just shut the hell up until we could move and mostly disappear.
@mfladd @RiotDemon @duodec I would negotiate with the powers at meh HQ and sponsor the most extreme mehrathon in history. Then I would skulk away in a cloud of anonymity.
@duodec yep. I would not want to be on the news. I remember a story fairly recently where someone wanted to stay anonymous but they signed their winning lottery ticket. To set up a trust, that was a big no no.
@ruouttaurmind captchas for days?
@RiotDemon “Do a handstand and click on all the images of 15th century Croatian poets”. But the item would be a Tesla Model S or iPhone Xs Max or some such.
@ruouttaurmind sounds like a perfect nightmare.
@RiotDemon I had a message board buddy I used to trade live shows (cd trading) back in the day. One day he hit big on the lottery. Never returned to the boards… Except six months later to message me saying I was cool and that he was disappearing from the site going forward.
I totally get it.
My friend and I each bought 10. I matched a single number. Such winning!
The courts ruled I do not have to tell you.
Not me - I can do math.
@macromeh Here’s some math for you:
Tickets purchased = 0
Chance of winning = 0%
Gotta play to win, bub.
@macromeh @medz The trouble is… even buying dozens or hundreds of tickets, the chance of winning (while not zero) is still vanishingly small.
It’s a really poor use of funds as an investment.
As entertainment:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@compunaut Well, that’s why you only buy 1. Keep the dream alive without wasting a lot of money.
@compunaut @medz My disappointment for buying a ticket and not winning (the most likely outcome, by a huge margin) is much higher than my disappointment for not winning because I didn’t bother to buy a ticket.
Followup: Woohoo! Once again, my “don’t buy a ticket” strategy came through! Perfect record.
I’ve stayed away from megamillions since they changed the numbers scheme years ago but for this I’m in. Work can’t agree on a group buy, so we dropped $20 on tickets
OK.
I bought 4 Mega-millions tickets and 2 Power-ball tickets.
I’d like to win both if possible.
10 losers each in the MM & PB draws earlier this week.
So, in for another 10 more losers each. Derp.
Bought a Quick Pick for both Powerball and Megamillions. I don’t know why. The thought of having a lot of money scares me.
@lordbowen If you win, you can send me as much as you want.
Putting a match to your money.Voluntarily paying tax to a state.Buying a lottery ticket. Nope didn’t.I already had a mega millions ticket and just replaced my loser power ball from last night with a new one. I already know I will likely match exactly zero numbers. It’s a total losers’ game. I’m a loser.
@shortman and you are in good company.
I have 3 or 4 unchecked tickets from various lotteries over the last few months in a shoe box of other random stuff I’ll eventually deal with. There’s a megamillions from the last draw and one for the next draw stashed in my phone case. I only ever buy quick picks and only one at a time. I never check them punctually. I’ve never won money from a draw game but I’m pretty close to breaking even on scratchers.
Sure it’s a waste of money, but I’ve spent more on Fukos this year than lottery tickets, so…
@Oneroundrobb
https://budgeting.thenest.com/old-can-lottery-ticket-turn-win-33843.html
Meh should sell scratch-off tickets. Find three Irks and “win” a fuko.
/giphy you may already be a winner
The thing that bothers me the most about state-sponsored gambling is that it is promoted as providing money for various popular causes like schools and wildlife preservation when in reality, there is little if any incremental benefit to those programs because the lottery money just offsets other tax revenue that is then free for the politicians to spend on their favorite boondoggles.
(Sorry for the Debbie Downer moment. wah-wah)
@macromeh welcome to illannoy. That’s just standard operating procedure, like the tollway fees that were supposed to go away eventually (and instead keep getting ratcheted up, and doubled if you actually try to use cash to pay them) and the ‘temporary’ income tax increases that always become permanent. Its never enough.
Well, I was ‘this close’ to winning it all.
I had three numbers, but all on different lines.
/image this close
@daveinwarsh
/giphy missed it by that much
/image not a winner
The Spouse is going to go stand in line tomorrow and get two tickets. I’m willing to drop a couple of bucks on it. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky again: in 1994 I matched 5 out of 6 and won $1700. I haven’t been able to match even two numbers since then, though.
Well the imaginary money I spend on an imaginary ticket had no numbers match. This is a win as I didn’t put a match to a real dollar buying a real ticket.
I got $4 back on the first ticket from the 670M draw. Zero back on the $20 worth of tickets for this draw.
However we’re going to do it again anyway. And this time the office is almost certainly going to do a pool ticket also (with photocopies so there’s no question on personal vs pool tickets).
The dream is worth a minor monetary sacrifice. Just think; unless too many winning tickets are sold you’d be getting many times the dollars that @snapster sold Woot! to Amazon for, which led to Mediocre and Meh… Imagine what new levels of ‘whatever…’ what you could do in comparison!
Well, in for another $20. 10 QPs because I don’t want responsibility for picking losers. Or I’m too lazy. Fielder’s Choice, because either way, I’m out.
At least the return is better than my costs to maintain this useless VMP badge. Can’t even get a VMP shirt to show for it.
I never buy lottery tickets with the intention of winning anything because, math (and reality).
But, whenever there is a group buy at work, I always buy in. I figure it is worth a couple of bucks to not have to hear people say “I told you so.” I think of these payments as insurance premiums for “I told you so insurance”. Plus, I’m not the person wasting time waiting on line.
Yesterday is the first time in quite a while that there was a group buy. With both MegaMillions and PowerBall, the insurance premium doubled to $4.
“You gotta be in it to win it!” is true, but so is “The odds are about the same whether you are in it or not!”
One time, maybe five years ago, when the group was about 20 people, we did win $42. Saved me an insurance payment. Another time, we won $8… that just got us some extra tickets.
@baqui63 This. Do not want to be the ‘odd man out’ left behind when everyone else boogies. We even have an understanding about if a person is out of office, on vacation, whatever. We chip in the extra $1 or $2 and let them know. If they pay it back when they’re back in the office then we’ll do it again next time. Insurance is a good say of looking at it, and even when I was an hourly newbie at my first job, a buck or two now and again was feasible.
I can buy a MegaMillions ticket or I can buy fidget spinners. I’m a loser either way. I’ll get both. If I win MegaMillions I’ll buy new batteries for everyone’s fidget spinners.
@sligett That sounds like a win /snicker
@sligett and no fridge to put them in?
@shahnm might have a word for you. What word that is has been left to the reader as an exercise.
@mike808 @sligett
@mike808 @shahnm If I win MegaMillions, I’ll buy batteries for fidget spinners, and a tiny fridge to store them in.
/giphy tiny fridge
@mike808 @sligett
And another set of numbers on an imaginary ticket had no numbers come up this time either. That is another $2 saved.
Gonna ride this one all the way until it’s over.
With so many people playing, I bought the same ticket twice. That way if I split the jackpot I get 2/3rds while the other winner only gets 1/3rd.
Im no fool.
South Carolina has a winner.
im in sc… not a winner.
apologies for lindsey graham.
The FL Lottery site is up and down. I had to go elsewhere to see whether I won. I didn’t.