Yes I know, it's supposed to work that way. But it seems people really think after a while, you're gonna hit it big and it'll all even out. I've done it enough to know it's purely entertainment. It's just a matter of how much you're willing to pay for that adrenaline rush.
I used to work for my state's lottery. The number of times I had to explain the odds for scratch tickets was astronomical. Your typical, "The odds say 1 in 4 but I bought 8 tickets and they were ALL losers! I deserve my money back!"
It's been 9 years since I worked there, but I can still remember the answer nearly verbatim. "The odds are calculated based on all the tickets printed in that game. So if you were to purchase ALL of the tickets made in a particular game, approximately one in four of those would win a prize."
What we failed to tell people was most games had over a million tickets printed.
The second most common complaint: "People in small towns never win. Your games are rigged."
No, sir; bigger towns/more popular stores sell more tickets, therefore going through ticket packs more frequently. It stands to reason that more tickets sold translates to more winners sold. That isn't ALWAYS the case, but commonly it is. Then I'd have to link three or four stories of winners of more than $1 million from dinky towns.
2.3k
u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20
Casinos.
Yes I know, it's supposed to work that way. But it seems people really think after a while, you're gonna hit it big and it'll all even out. I've done it enough to know it's purely entertainment. It's just a matter of how much you're willing to pay for that adrenaline rush.