The Lottery experiment, June.

So, I kind of fell off on the whole Simpsons thing. I keep trying to get back into it but it became such a slog that I wasn't looking forward to it. I needed a new project to blog about and thanks to a change at my job I find myself working at a place that sells scratcher lottery tickets. What was meant to be temporarily filling in for someone turned into a full time position with a lot more responsibility, but no pay raise.

Anyhow I was bored at work and started to wonder, can you actually win at scratcher tickets? I have a few regulars who come in and buy a lot of tickets, and win some, but what is the win to loss on their purchases. I figured I would try for myself, however I don't want to waste a lot of money and I came up with a plan.

Here's the plan, once a week I'm going to buy a scratcher ticket although I'm not going to play the actual game, I'm going to scratch off the confirmation bar code and then scan it on the main lottery machine. Then a little bit of evil, take the losing ticket and drop it somewhere, someone will come along and find a ticket that hasn't been played and think they found a potentially winning ticket. I'm making someone happy for a few minutes until the finish and find that ticket is a loser. I consider it a life lesson.

Meanwhile here's the breakdown on price range of the scratch tickets:

$1

$2

$3

$5

$10

and 

$15

Several of the tickets have a "second chance" option, if the ticket isn't a winner you can go on line, enter the scratch off code and you have a chance to win a future drawing. Right now there are three second chance contests, a $3 ticket with a second chance of $3000, a $5 ticket with a second chance of $5000 and a $10 ticket with a second chance of One Million Dollars! I check people's tickets for them and when they aren't winners they want me to toss them, which somehow wind up in my bag and then bring them home to enter them on the lottery web site.

So, onto the experiment, 

June

Week One

I decided to start off with a $1 ticket that had a potential jackpot of $1000. And, it was not a winner. So the result of my first try was $1 spend, $0 won and I'm at -$1 in my experiment. I'm off to a....start.

Week Two.

The ticket display has cards of the various games under a large glass sheet. People can look in it, see what the games are and how much they cost. I figured I would use my lucky coin to pick a ticket for me, I spun it on the glass and it landed on a two dollar ticket with a potential payout of $1000. I bought it and, didn't win anything. My total so far was $3 spend, $0 dollars won and I'm at a -$3.

That should have been how I ended the week, however, each ticket has the game number, pack number and individual ticket number printed on them, for control and legal reasons, plus they are in numbered spots in the case so people can say "gimme a number 5". For some reason all these numbers lined up on a ticket in a way that meant something to me and I felt that the Sisters Fate were encouraging me to buy it, I had no choice but to do it. So I spent an additional two dollars and...the Sisters Fate were laughing at me for believing that random numbers actually meant something. I officially ended the the week having spent $5, won $0 and was at a -$5 in my experiment.  Why do people do this?

Week Three.

This started off to be an interesting week. There is a small lottery kiosk off to the side of the main counter. It has brochures with game information, the forms to fill out if you want to pick your lucky numbers, a small counter to scratch on and a scanner connected to the main lottery so you can check your bar code and see if you're a winner, although I always encourage people to double check at the main machine even if the thing tells them they didn't win. Anyhow on the side is a small trash can to toss your loser ticket in. When I find tickets in the trash I check them on the main machine, just in case. On Tuesday I found a couple of tickets so I checked them, the first one was a loser, the second ticket gave me a "Bar Code Error" message so I took a closer look, they hadn't fully uncovered the code so I got out my lucky coin, cleaned it and scanned it again. Holy Crapppers, it's a $30 winner! Someone had scanned it, didn't read the screen but just listened for the happy little tune it plays for winners, thought it was a loser and tossed it in the trash. Since it had been tossed in the night before I don't know who did it so I couldn't give it back to them and basically found $30 in the trash.

At this point i had spent $5, won $0, and then found a winning $30 ticket so I'm up $25 and my experiment is funded for at least a couple of months, if I don't get too crazy.

Friday rolled around, which has become my official purchase day. I spun my lucky coin and it landed on a $1 ticket with a potential payout of $1000. I scanned the barcode and, Holy Crap, it was a $50 winner! You know, that little thrill you get when you actually win? This is where the danger of becoming hooked on gambling comes from, however I'm pretty cheap and hate throwing away good money on stupid stuff so I'm not planning on a Vegas trip to invest my current winnings on the craps tables. 

So at the end of week three I had spent $6, won $50, found a $30 ticket, which puts me in the positive category of $74. 

Week Four

I ran out of a pack of tickets and there was a second pack that was almost empty. Once a week the state lottery office calls to see if I need anything so I told them to send me a pack of $5 tickets and more of the popular $10 tickets. By the time I got the new tickets the pack that was almost empty was down to two tickets. I was thinking, I'm ahead on my lottery funds and I could buy both of those tickets and then I could put out the new pack, especially since it is a second chance ticket and I could get the tossed ones to enter on the internet. However, as I said before, I'm cheap and the tickets were $5 each, I would have to spend $10 out of my experiment fund. If I stick with low end tickets I could buy four weeks of tickets for the $10. After weighing the pros and cons I decided to not buy the two tickets and just wait for them to run out before putting the new tickets in the rack.

However, when I walked in to work on Friday I discovered there was only one of the $5 tickets left. I figured that once again the Sisters Fate were trying to send me a message, "buy the last ticket", so I did. I spent $5 on the ticket, it had a potential payout of $50,000, and, it was a loser, once again the Sisters Fate were laughing at me.

I've also managed to get a number of Second Chance tickets. As of the end of the month I have entered one ticket with a potential of winning of $3000, one ticket with a potential of winning $5000 and four tickets with a potential jackpot of $1,000,000. The first two end next month and the big jackpot will be drawn at the end of the year. So I'll have to wait to find out about those one.

The web site also had a survey that will have a drawing worth $1000 so I filled it out. I mostly answered the questions based on what my customers tell me (mostly that they hate the crossword games), and to say it's better to buy at the counter than at a vending machine. I doubt they care about my opinion.

June Total

I ended up the month spending $11 on tickets, won $50, found a $30 ticket and have $69 in my lottery fund.

If I was a smart gambler I would say that the experiment was only for the month and walk away happy, but I had decided to do it for at least until the end of the year and potentially for a full year, until July 1st 2026. We'll see, perhaps my lucky coin will actually pick a big winner next month.

Stay tuned. 

(every time I read this I rewrite it so I'm just gonna go ahead and post it. If there are any really dumb errors, well so be it)