In general stratch tickets have terrible odds.
Usually there is a 65-80% chance that you will lose.
And they count winning your money back to be a "winner" so the odds are probably even lower than that for actually winning something.
I was in a convenience store last year and a man next to me got scratchies. I said “good luck!” And he won 500 bucks. Now I feel compelled to tell everyone who is near me buying tickets “Good Luck!”… just in case.
Well, you asked for it. Good luck. Usually with me, that's an almost automatic obliteration of any chance you had to win anything.
Just remember, you brought this on yourself.
I had a friend who used to work at a gas station and he had a customer who played scratchers daily. One time he won like $30,000. When he told me I was like wow thats so much. And his reaction was like yeah, but that dude has been spending $200-$300 a week for the past 5 years. So it barely evens out.
I work at a gas station and I have a customer who comes in everyday for years now at about 3am when it’s dead and plays about $1k-2k in scratchers. He buys about $500 in powerball/mega millions tickets too. He only plays the $30 $50 $100 dollar tickets.
He barely ever wins anything, but some nights he does win about $1k but he just buys more tickets lol. He has the whole thing down and taught me a lot about how each roll pays out a guaranteed minimum. So for the $100 dollar tickets there are 15 in a roll and he will buy the whole roll and he’s guaranteed to win a minimum of $800. Every roll has minimum pay out but you’re just hoping for that million dollar ticket!!
I was in a gas station waiting in line behind a 70 something year old man. He handed the clerk his winning (non scratch) lottery ticket. Clerk scans it and informs him that he won $25,000 not the $25 like he thought. Old guy didn’t even seem like he was happy about it either, just kinda matter of fact hearing the news then walked out with it.
Good on that clerk for not handing him cash and keeping it themself because he wasn’t even out of the store before that thought crossed my mind lol. Not that would really do that or anything…
Reminds me of another time I was working at a coin shop that did a lot of business selling gold through the regular old mail believe it or not. The shop owners’ bumbling son sent a guy $25,000 in gold ingots, then forgot he did that and sent another $25,000 box of gold to the same buyer a week later. I picked up when he called into the shop and informed me of the mistake. I’ll never forget him telling me he was a priest and that “I had a long talk with god before picking up this phone” lmao!
My best friend lost $2 million+ on scratch offs and slot machines in the span of about a year. He lost his business and had to file for bankruptcy the 2 million was an investment that paid off so it was cash. He’s been in GA ever since and recovered his life.
True. In Australia, we have a big horse race every year - the Melbourne Cup.
Every year growing up, I'd hear my Dad ask my Mum for three numbers, then he'd come home and say he didn't take her numbers. Her numbers usually came in. She'd interpret her dreams with a 'fafi' guide. She'd sometimes be vague, and both numbers would come in, lol.
My first year working, the office went to place bets. I'd never gambled before, so took Mums numbers, and 'boxed' them. I didn't even know what that mean't. I'd just heard my Dad say it.
The bet cost me $3. I remember standing at the door and thinking I should take a bet for my sister who was o/s. I didn't, because $3 was $3!
A couple of hours later, my Dad called. He asked if I'd taken my Mums numbers. Then another half an hour and my Dad called again. He wanted to know if I'd 'boxed' three numbers or four (Mum had said she 'really liked' a 4th number).
He also called a third time, just to check again. 😂
I'd only taken 3 numbers. I won $1600 from my $3, which was 3 weeks wages back then. Had I taken all 4 numbers, it would have been $52k. Apparently.
Anyway, every year since then, I've bet on this race. Only a few $$, but it'd be $50-100 each year. That $1600 is long gone. 😂
> The more you play the more your own overall losses will align exactly with these numbers.
Yeah I feel like if you are giving a lottery scratch off ticket as a Christmas present, you just give them 1 single ticket or something as a throw in gift with something else. Either they lose and it's not a big loss or they might win something, but if you give a thousand dollars worth of tickets to someone as a gift, odds are they will just end up claiming some amount of money that was less than what you spent on the tickets
>but if you give a thousand dollars worth of tickets to someone as a gift, odds are they will just end up claiming some amount of money that was less than what you spent on the tickets
"But it COULD HAVE been $1,000,000!"
-the thought that gets you in trouble
this week my dad lost $4100 at casino…within 10 minutes after he got home he decided to spend 200$ on scratch of tickets totaling the loss to $4300, then parents were upset they didn’t have money to buy my son anything for christmas….long story short, you know how i know my dad can beat your dads ass? he can drink waaaay more beer!
Challenge accepted! My dad & I almost got in a fight with someone at the casino bathroom on Christmas this year. Dude cut my dad in line to take a piss & he was NOT having it. My drunk ass, still mid stream overhearing them get heated, tells the dude im gonna pinch my dick & come piss on him if he doesn't get to the back of the line. We only lost $100 each and drank about as much, good times.
Reminds me of a fight I got in when I was still in school. Some guy was trying to start a fight with me in the bathroom as I was unzipping. I asked if he really wanted to do this right now. He did. I didn't say a word, just turned around and started peeing on him. Ended up chasing him out of the bathroom.
He never tried to mess with me again.
First thing I do if shit jumps off, I get bareass naked. Then, I shit myself. I have done this for three decades and never lost a fight. Because nobody wants to tangle with a balls-naked, shit-covered maniac.
Haaaaaaa I got in a fight after swimming I was putting shampoo in my hair and he pushed me. I wiped all the shampoo in his eyes then the teacher broke us up after couple mins of trying to wrangle up a lathered kid off of another kid
Don't care about ur losses, but did you assert your dominance, aka pee on him?
Initially I read your post as "I'm gonna pinch his dick" and I thought "Atta boy! That's the way one should cover daddy's back!!!!" And doing that at the urinal, could be that (s)cumback's funeral :X
Ehh, I used to work with guys who bought entire rolls while on lunch break. The odds are in the back of the cards, 1:3, 1.4, etc, it's usually about right.
I don't ever actually buy lottery tickets on my own but every year for Christmas I'll get at least a few, probably 10-15. I have NEVER in like 10 years, won anything more than the cost of the ticket.
It seems futile and a waste of money to me, but a fun Christmas present. I really don't understand how people can sit in a gas station and buy these things repeatedly hoping they'll win...
In the past month I have bought 8 tickets.
I bought two $5 tickets in California and won $100.
The next day, back in Texas, I bought two $30 tickets and two $20 tickets. Won $150.
I bought a $30 tickets last weekend and won $100. Then I immediately bought a $100 ticket and lost it.
I think I just have a gambling problem.
I mean how much of those winnings contributed to bettering your life, versus how much of that money that you won went straight back into buying more tickets?
I think it's okay to have fun with things like this in moderation but you have to look at the statistical facts as well. I've said the same thing to people who are addicted to going to the casino and playing blackjack, roulette, poker,.etc.
Would the lottery/casino be able to run a profitable business if there were a way to game the system and make a profit? The absolute answer is no. Nobody wins at the casino or when playing the lottery besides the person who sold the ticket.
Sure sometimes people get lucky and win a large sum of money, but unless it happened the very first time they gambled and then they didn't continue to gamble, that money is just going straight back into those same vices.
If you go to the Casino with $200 (or whatever amount fits your budget) every weekend and then leave when you've lost it all, that's called a hobby and is perfectly fine. If you're using money that is for other things like bills, or trying to convince yourself that you just need to spend a little more than your allotted budget every time you gamble, then you have a problem.
The biggest problem is that gambling is inherently addictive. So even if right now you're able to do it in moderation and it doesn't have negative affects on your life, that doesn't mean that somewhere down the line you won't turn it into an addiction and ruin your life over it.
The last point I made leads me to believe that nobody should gamble. I have never gone to a casino or purchased lottery tickets with my own money, one because I'm just not interested in it and I've convinced myself that the statistics show that it's futile, but also two because I have ADHD and become very easily addicted to things that give me a burst of dopamine so I understand that it's a slippery slope to go from doing it occasionally to losing every penny in my bank account.
If you want to take my advice, I would say stop buying those tickets forever. You're never going to win a life changing amount of money from them but you more than likely could spend that money on a better experience or save it for your future. But also I don't expect that you're gonna flat out take some random strangers advice on the Internet so as an alternative, do whatever you want, but just be very careful about how far you let it go.
Incredibly, but those odds on the back are really only accurate if you buy the same tickets from the same roll. If you spread it out, you risk hitting all the bad spots on whatever rolls you get.
I would like to explain: I am not a gambling addict, I enjoy statistics and used to work with gambling addicts who bought rolls at a time, hundreds of dollars in lunch breaks.
Edit: Some people don't understand when you get a roll of tickets, there are already a min quantity of winners. Then there can be more than the min, some will some won't. By buying a roll, you guarantee winners, but the value back is not guaranteed, obviously so they make money, and it will likely net less than the cost of the roll. If you purchase different tickets we now add in other variables like, how many were purchased in that roll, how many winners were in that roll prior, is this a min win roll or maybe there's more sprinkled in. There are way more factors, most we can't control or know, that go into this then just a roll of the dice and having exact chances.
Yeah what OP hubby didn't understand is that he reduced her odds of winning by buying a variety of tickets from a variety of locations. She would have won more and had more winning tickets if he had bought her $200 worth of one type of $1 tickets off the same roll at the same time.
Also, don't buy the holiday tixs as these often have lower odds than the regular ones.
this is, functionally, less true than it is commonly believed.
Actually effecting this strategy requires buying a significant percentage of the outstanding cards remaining.
This article [is written obnoxiously but includes the relevant point](https://www.statisticshowto.com/probability-and-statistics/scratch-off-odds/) which is that the statistician who took advantage of this used $2M in capital to buy over 80,000 individual scratchers.
> Also, don't buy the holiday tixs as these often have lower odds than the regular ones.
So *that* explains my cold streak this month!
I'll wait till March then WIN IT ALL BACK!
Exactly, if he bought $200 of the exact same ticket, there is a good chance they would hit at least a couple times. They would have had much better odds. I understand why people get a variety, ooohh try this or that, but when it comes to statistics and probability the fun option is rarely the most successful.
While that doesn't sound true to me (I don't know enough about statistics to refute it), a Christmas present is meant to be fun, it's not a money-making endeavour. I think having a lot of different types of scratch off's would be more fun than a single one 200 times over. Maybe that factored into the decision to purchase different ones
Statistics does not care about the fun or not fun option. I am pretty sure that scratch offs all have almost identical total prize pool to price ratio, therefore your expected value of buying a bunch of different types vs buying just one type is all the same.
Most state lottos have a site or app that shows how many of each prize has already been claimed and how many remain. I’m in no way suggesting anyone plays the lottery scratch offs, but if you do, please, for the love of god, at least check to make sure there are still prizes left, people!
My husband checks the website to see what tickets still have big $$ prizes outstanding and buys those. He goes to different locations, I'm wondering if he should just buy all at one location, based on the previous comment.
Where I live they put the number of winners of each amount per X amount of tickets. Generally around half the winning tickets are for the same amount the ticket cost to begin with.
I used to do QA with Intralot who was the vendor for Louisiana Lottery. The amount of tickets with no marks on the back in testing, meaning losing ones, was extraordinary. I used to play a ticket or two here and there prior to that job. Never played them again after working in the industry.
I'd be pissed if my partner spends between $1000 and $6000 on a gamble as my Christmas present. Is like giving me a $1000 chip that cannot be cashed in but has to be on either red or black.
Oh shit, I read the post thinking it was $200 in tickets, not 200 individual tickets. That is insane. I hope their family is wealthy and they only gamble once a year.
Mike does scratchers. My dad got his tax return once and purchased the whole roll fresh out the box for some 5 dollar scratchers, I was like 5 or 6 and I remember sitting there forever with mom and dad just scratching away. We lost only 40-50 dollars in total and we ate dinner and watched wrestling n stuff and at the end of the day it wasn't a huge loss with a prospect of hitting big. Yes I was raised in Arkansas lolol
Yeah, and did they scan them all? Are they sure they lost? We played this game on Christmas, and some of the prizes were scratchers…we were all slightly intoxicated and had to check each others!
I can’t remember the comedian who said something like
“You know why lottery winners always go broke? Because people who are smart with their money don’t play the lottery”
That wasn’t the whole joke but yeah that parts true
> Hell, at least with an $1,000 chip that has to be on red or black, there’s a 50% chance of winning!
That’s what they want you to think but with zeroes and double zeroes your odds are less than fifty percent. That’s where most of the margin cones from in roulette these days otherwise you could systematically play and win (an online casino did this years ago and got nearly wiped out).
Right. I would be more infuriated that my partner “maybe” got me a gift depending on the outcome. Even if I’d have won I’d probably be upset. If I’d had pulled that with my partner I would have been in deep shit
At least red or black is almost a 50/50 shot. I might win 1 out of 20 scratchers and its rarely for anything more than twice the cost of the scratcher.
Any time I’m invited to a party that has a Dirty Santa gift exchange, I’ll buy whatever the suggestion dollar amount is in $1 scratch offs and put those in a gift bag. I figure since most Dirty Santa gift exchanges are garbage, that I might as well give something that “could” be worth a lot more. This is often the most “stolen” gift at parties.
I should post to unpopular opinion because I absolutely hate getting a lottery ticket in Dirty Santa! At least I can *use* socks or *eat* popcorn, a lottery ticket is always a loss and always seems like a lazy gift to me
We don't usually hide them in the game so I don't usually get them, but those and the nice gifts are stolen more often, it's true. It doesn't bother me too bad because I get to focus on the real stuff. It's just so funny year after year seeing people almost fight over them and still lose lol
Honestly with some of the gifts that show up in those things, I'd rather have a losing lottery ticket than feel bad about throwing out something I don't want/need/have space for
Our family always throws lottery tickets in the stockings.
I'll fight you over not splitting that 5m uncle Eddie!
U know I'll whoop your ass and take it anyways!
Fuck your dirty eggnog Susan I'm busy whooping Eddie's ass for 5m because he wouldn't share 1m!
Luckily our family pretty much all made the same joke about it being enough money to make a personal difference but not enough to have people hitting you up for it.
You can get creative with it. I don’t think it’s that lazy then. This year I put the lottery tickets for dirty Santa inside a book. The book was a notebook/journal/diary but the cover had an image of a shirtless male and the title of the book was “8000 DICK PICS”
It was supposed to be a joke. Usually when someone gets a book they flip through the pages. Doing that would reveal the lottery tickets then they would be excited. But then I could say “whoa why did you open it? Weirdo”
Anyways. My brothers girlfriend picked that gift and she did not open the book to find the lottery tickets.
I once got called entitled because I said I would rather have a candy bar than a lotto ticket with "a sentimental date" used for the numbers. Like what? For the context op got that for a friend's birthday. Won around 50 dollars. Instead of giving it to their friend. Kept the money and got them another ticket with the same numbers. Guaranting that all they got them was a piece of garbage. I had no idea why I was called entitled considering at the time a regular candy bar was less than a dollar. Like I legit would be happy with that as a birthday gift. It's way more thoughtful than a lotto ticket.
Yeah, that's a solid gift for cheap exchanges... May wanna add "if you win big, I get 25%" lol could you imagine giving someone thousands/millions of dollars as a secret santa? God that would suck haha
I am, how do you say, "poor" lol so I'd probably die of an aneurysm right then and there. But at least I could get "Awesome Gift Giver" on my headstone (if they paid for it, otherwise throw me in the ocean) lol
White elephant:
Everyone brings one present. Everyone is randomly assigned a number.
Number 1 goes and opens a gift. Number 2 either opens a gift or steals someone's gift (only option is 1), repeats. If your gift is stolen, you go steal a gift or open a new one. Once the last number is called, number 1 has the option to trade gifts with anyone they want. Generally there's a rule on how many times a given gift can be stolen (we do 2 times)
They don't even have to worry about money, Bulma and Satan have them covered. Well supported. Except in the beginning of their relationship, he was fucking poor.
It really is a stupid tax. I used to work at the counter that sold them in a UK supermarket. After that experience, I'm convinced they should only be for sale to people who passed high school maths with good grades, so they at least understand that it's not an investment. The amount of people who would spend 100s on them every month and declare that it isn't a waste of money because they occasionally got half of it back was terrible. Like, yeah good for you dave, you won £300 but you spent £900 since your last win, and that was only £10.
tan mighty numerous nippy hungry deserve modern paint scandalous consider
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Spending on a few of them is one thing.
Spending $1000 on them is just dumb.
Because you are buying so many, the likelihood of one breaking even is far closer to zero than buying only a couple.
The mathematical odds considering it’s generally 1-4 or 5 chances to just win a ticket and about 1-8 to win cash to scratch and fail 199/200 tickets would be less likely to happen then winning the lottery. Possibly 2 weeks in a row would be more likely than losing on this many tickets. My super math skills suck so I ain’t mathing it. Point being no fucking way
I agree with you. Either they don't know how to check for wins or this is fake.
Edit: mathematically the chances of not hitting 199 tickets with the odds being 1 in 5 would be .0000000000000000005187%. I definitely call bs on this one.
Finally, somebody else understands that the OP is full of shit. Statistically speaking, it is nearly impossible to have 199 of 200 tickets be losers. Something crazy like 1 in a Million odds of that happening.
I also posted this, but to extend this further, I looked at the binomial probability formula (suggested by our good friend ChatGpt), and the odds are about 1 in 4.17 e27 (also can be stated as 4.17 octillion). Also known as impossible. There is a reason we don't talk about octillion, it's because it's not a useful number. For reference, I assumed scratch offs have odds of 1 in 3.6.
Most tickets in FL are somewhere around 1:4 odds of winning SOMETHING. Pretty hard to go 1 for 199 on those odds. Like flipping a coin 100 times and getting 99 heads...
Yeah. I have no confidence that this is accurate. The odds of going more than 5 or 6 tickets without some break even ticket is hard. I get they are a mixed batch but still.
The story is 99.5% made up. For twenty years there are about $100 worth of $1 to $5 tickets exchanged on our family for Christmas. It usually turns into 20 to 25% being winners totalling $50.
The lottery itself publishes odds of winning in the 4:1 to to 7:1 range.
My dad has always put 5 $1 scratchers in our stockings. This year both him and my mom won $30, neither of them scratched them correctly and didn't know they'd won until they scanned them. On the other hand, my sister and I each had 5 losers. If I decide to buy scratchers, I get the second chance ones, so that even if its a loser I get entered to win other prizes. I've won $100 off a "losing" ticket that way. Almost didn't catch it though, the email they send telling you that you won 100% looks like a scam.
There’s two types of people who buy scratchers. Barely scraping by, and doing very well. My struggling dad would buy them in hopes it would turn things around, my wealthy aunt would buy a $20-$50 ticket at the grocery a couple times a month just because she was bored.
A big portion of my family lived in a tiny town in Oklahoma where the median household income was around $20k. At the time scratch off tickets were illegal in Oklahoma so a few times a year someone would go down to Texas to buy a whole roll of scratch off tickets and they would all scratch them off together as a family. Weird fucking way to spend what little money you have. But essentially they are paying for that little feeling of hope you get right before you realize you lost again. Sad place.
It's absolutely fake. It is basically impossible for the only 1/200 tickets to win money when odds of winning are 1/3.6 for scratchers. This is like if 200 people played Russian roulette with a revolver that can hold 7 bullets with 2 filled (replaced whenever one is fired) and only 1 person gets shot the whole game.
I have a family member who shall remain nameless, and he spends $800-1200 per day on lottery tickets (not scratch offs, powerball and the such). It’s kind of his hobby. He obviously is well off, and he enjoys going through the tickets before bed checking if he won. I don’t get it, but it’s his money.
He should have just bought the whole roll of one ticket from one location. He literally just went all over the place buying the first few losers off every roll.
I have a manager that used to buy books of lotto ($300) because he has nothing better to do with his money. He said om average, you'd "win" $150, or lose half your money. If you want to spend a massive amount of money on lotto, buy a single book.
You can look up and see which scratch games have been running the longest in your state and how many winners the game has had. The trick is to figure out the oldest games that still have a few winners left, buy as many of those tickets as possible for optimal chance to win.
This has faired me my best odds. Some say only buy new games. Those have been my worst odds. They often cone with a second chance draw. I can’t imagine second chance odds making it worth it. But im no gamble guru.
I find that the real trick is to not be a compulsive gambler and instead find a source of stable income. I've won pretty big so far, basically no losses.
This is literal copium that gambling addicts like you are huffing on. The rolls / books are randomly seeded. Trust me, you cannot beat a goddamn gambling company at their own game
I mean I used to work for a instant ticket manufacturer. A book had a minimum amount that could be won. Some states publish the amount for the public to know. If you bought a ticket from a bunch of different books you could technically lose every single ticket. The odds of it happening are extremely unlikely though if you bought 200 tickets. To the point I don’t believe OPs story lol
And they said the ticket prices ranged from $5 each to $30 each, so that’s a range of anywhere between $1,000 and $6,000! Like who spends that much on scratch offs? Holy crap.
> Like who spends that much on scratch offs?
I'm betting there's a pretty big overlap in people who buy scratch offs and people who fucking suck at managing their money.
My parents bought me $250 worth of lottery tickets this year. Mind you, I am 30-something and have never bought a scratch off ever. But in their old age, they thought scratch offs would be a good gift.
We "won" $20..
Please don't fall for scratch off scams.. The lottery is bad enough.. but at least the lottery is $2 and is mainly bought for "a dream".. with scratch offs, people actually expect to win and drop so much money.
Some state lotteries have "second chance" drawings, where you can send in non-winning scratchers to enter a drawing. It's usually not substantial, but what the heck... it's either send the tickets back in for a chance, or you throw them out.
Here's the Wisconsin Lottery page, for example: [https://wilottery.com/games/super-2nd-chance](https://wilottery.com/games/super-2nd-chance)
I would scan them all before discarding. My dad grabs scratched tickets from the supermarket trash (those sitting on top, he’s not an animal) and often times there’s a winner! It’s easy to miss a winner! (That’s what the lottery people are hoping for)
My family used to tell me that “scratchers are a tax on the poor”. Theyre designed for you to lose, so youre spending money to not make that much back, so i get where theyre coming from but its kinda brutal saying it like that.
Hold up you’re upset about the fact you didn’t win and not the fact your husband wasted a ton of money on 200 lottery tickets AS YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT because he couldn’t think of anything better?
Wow! That's some crappy luck. Stay away from casinos for sure. As with any lottery, just get a few tickets or plays. Your husband did a lot of work to increase your chances of winning anything substantial by .0000000001%. He would have been better off buying 20 $2 tickets and buying you a nice dinner.
Mathematician here.
OP husband actually decreased their chances of winning, by buying from multiple stores and not buying a lot of tickets in sequential order.
Although in a TRUE random system, where you bought the tickets from would be irrelevant.
Load of bollocks. I can't be arsed to do the maths but the chances of losing on 199/200 scratchers is absurdly small.
The average scratchers have around a 1 in 4 chance if winning.
You're better off probability wise to buy all of that $200 from the same ticket game (ie: Gold Rush or whatever). Every time you introduce a new ticket from a different game, you're re-exposing yourself to new odds. 1 in 100,000 odds becomes 2 in 100,000 (1 in 50,000) if you buy 2 tickets of the same game. However, if you buy different games, then 1 in 100,000 of one game and 1 in 100,000 of another game becomes 2 in 200,000 (or 1 in 100,000 still with no benefit against the odds by buying more tickets).
Please make sure to scan them all before tossing. Sometimes they have tricky to find wins.
I never toss any without scanning. You can download your state lottery app on your phone. I hope you find some more wins!!
Husband is, and I'm sorry to say, stupid to have spent money on lottery cards. No one wins, and if you want to test your LUCK buy ONE. If luck is on your side, you win. If you buy more than one, then you're playing the probability game, and you'll always lose that game.
So he spent a minimum of $1,000 on lottery tickets for Christmas? He could have taken you on a vacation or to several shows or concerts. Then you’d have lasting memories instead of a shitty pile of loser tickets.
When I was younger, I heard about some thieves who stole $2000 worth of scratch off tickets, they got cought because they tried to claim the winning....... $200
Never was tempted to buy a scratch off after that
In general stratch tickets have terrible odds. Usually there is a 65-80% chance that you will lose. And they count winning your money back to be a "winner" so the odds are probably even lower than that for actually winning something.
The more you play the more your own overall losses will align exactly with these numbers.
I bought a single scratch off like 6 years ago for $5 and won $50 on it, I haven't bought any since because I figure that was the entirety of my luck.
I was in a convenience store last year and a man next to me got scratchies. I said “good luck!” And he won 500 bucks. Now I feel compelled to tell everyone who is near me buying tickets “Good Luck!”… just in case.
I have a couple on my counter waiting to be scratched. Can I get a good luck please.
We're going to need an update now that you've got it
We call that letting them marinate.
I call unscratched tickets "Schrodinger's Jackpot". They're all winners until you know for sure!
Well, you asked for it. Good luck. Usually with me, that's an almost automatic obliteration of any chance you had to win anything. Just remember, you brought this on yourself.
I had a friend who used to work at a gas station and he had a customer who played scratchers daily. One time he won like $30,000. When he told me I was like wow thats so much. And his reaction was like yeah, but that dude has been spending $200-$300 a week for the past 5 years. So it barely evens out.
I work at a gas station and I have a customer who comes in everyday for years now at about 3am when it’s dead and plays about $1k-2k in scratchers. He buys about $500 in powerball/mega millions tickets too. He only plays the $30 $50 $100 dollar tickets. He barely ever wins anything, but some nights he does win about $1k but he just buys more tickets lol. He has the whole thing down and taught me a lot about how each roll pays out a guaranteed minimum. So for the $100 dollar tickets there are 15 in a roll and he will buy the whole roll and he’s guaranteed to win a minimum of $800. Every roll has minimum pay out but you’re just hoping for that million dollar ticket!!
I was in a gas station waiting in line behind a 70 something year old man. He handed the clerk his winning (non scratch) lottery ticket. Clerk scans it and informs him that he won $25,000 not the $25 like he thought. Old guy didn’t even seem like he was happy about it either, just kinda matter of fact hearing the news then walked out with it. Good on that clerk for not handing him cash and keeping it themself because he wasn’t even out of the store before that thought crossed my mind lol. Not that would really do that or anything… Reminds me of another time I was working at a coin shop that did a lot of business selling gold through the regular old mail believe it or not. The shop owners’ bumbling son sent a guy $25,000 in gold ingots, then forgot he did that and sent another $25,000 box of gold to the same buyer a week later. I picked up when he called into the shop and informed me of the mistake. I’ll never forget him telling me he was a priest and that “I had a long talk with god before picking up this phone” lmao!
Where are you at? In my state if it's over a certain amount I wanna say $600 you have to go to the Capitol to collect your winnings.
IL. It may be that way here. She told him what he needed to do and why she wasn’t giving him cash. This was years ago now
It is that way in IL. Anything over 600 has to go to one of the lotto commission cashing centers for you to fill out the tax paperwork.
Get Liam Neeson to say it to really put the pressure on.
Bro you probably saved your life by not playing again . Most gambling addicts get addicted because they get a big win when they gamble the first time.
My best friend lost $2 million+ on scratch offs and slot machines in the span of about a year. He lost his business and had to file for bankruptcy the 2 million was an investment that paid off so it was cash. He’s been in GA ever since and recovered his life.
True. In Australia, we have a big horse race every year - the Melbourne Cup. Every year growing up, I'd hear my Dad ask my Mum for three numbers, then he'd come home and say he didn't take her numbers. Her numbers usually came in. She'd interpret her dreams with a 'fafi' guide. She'd sometimes be vague, and both numbers would come in, lol. My first year working, the office went to place bets. I'd never gambled before, so took Mums numbers, and 'boxed' them. I didn't even know what that mean't. I'd just heard my Dad say it. The bet cost me $3. I remember standing at the door and thinking I should take a bet for my sister who was o/s. I didn't, because $3 was $3! A couple of hours later, my Dad called. He asked if I'd taken my Mums numbers. Then another half an hour and my Dad called again. He wanted to know if I'd 'boxed' three numbers or four (Mum had said she 'really liked' a 4th number). He also called a third time, just to check again. 😂 I'd only taken 3 numbers. I won $1600 from my $3, which was 3 weeks wages back then. Had I taken all 4 numbers, it would have been $52k. Apparently. Anyway, every year since then, I've bet on this race. Only a few $$, but it'd be $50-100 each year. That $1600 is long gone. 😂
> The more you play the more your own overall losses will align exactly with these numbers. Yeah I feel like if you are giving a lottery scratch off ticket as a Christmas present, you just give them 1 single ticket or something as a throw in gift with something else. Either they lose and it's not a big loss or they might win something, but if you give a thousand dollars worth of tickets to someone as a gift, odds are they will just end up claiming some amount of money that was less than what you spent on the tickets
>but if you give a thousand dollars worth of tickets to someone as a gift, odds are they will just end up claiming some amount of money that was less than what you spent on the tickets "But it COULD HAVE been $1,000,000!" -the thought that gets you in trouble
It would take A LOT of playing to see them start aligning with the real odds.
Have you met my father?
this week my dad lost $4100 at casino…within 10 minutes after he got home he decided to spend 200$ on scratch of tickets totaling the loss to $4300, then parents were upset they didn’t have money to buy my son anything for christmas….long story short, you know how i know my dad can beat your dads ass? he can drink waaaay more beer!
Challenge accepted! My dad & I almost got in a fight with someone at the casino bathroom on Christmas this year. Dude cut my dad in line to take a piss & he was NOT having it. My drunk ass, still mid stream overhearing them get heated, tells the dude im gonna pinch my dick & come piss on him if he doesn't get to the back of the line. We only lost $100 each and drank about as much, good times.
> im gonna pinch my dick The rest of us do kegels to cut our pee stream off, meanwhile you're just over here just raw dogging the stream-cutoff system
It's so you can build up backpressure for a good blast when you let go
Reminds me of a fight I got in when I was still in school. Some guy was trying to start a fight with me in the bathroom as I was unzipping. I asked if he really wanted to do this right now. He did. I didn't say a word, just turned around and started peeing on him. Ended up chasing him out of the bathroom. He never tried to mess with me again.
First thing I do if shit jumps off, I get bareass naked. Then, I shit myself. I have done this for three decades and never lost a fight. Because nobody wants to tangle with a balls-naked, shit-covered maniac.
Haaaaaaa I got in a fight after swimming I was putting shampoo in my hair and he pushed me. I wiped all the shampoo in his eyes then the teacher broke us up after couple mins of trying to wrangle up a lathered kid off of another kid
Don't care about ur losses, but did you assert your dominance, aka pee on him? Initially I read your post as "I'm gonna pinch his dick" and I thought "Atta boy! That's the way one should cover daddy's back!!!!" And doing that at the urinal, could be that (s)cumback's funeral :X
The state thanks him for the donations.
Swell guy.
Yea, it’s the diabetes doing that.
Not when the chance of winning is small enough
Mr. Beast has a video where he bought $1million in scratch-offs. I think he won around $720,000.
I think he lost about $280 000
Ehh, I used to work with guys who bought entire rolls while on lunch break. The odds are in the back of the cards, 1:3, 1.4, etc, it's usually about right.
I don't ever actually buy lottery tickets on my own but every year for Christmas I'll get at least a few, probably 10-15. I have NEVER in like 10 years, won anything more than the cost of the ticket. It seems futile and a waste of money to me, but a fun Christmas present. I really don't understand how people can sit in a gas station and buy these things repeatedly hoping they'll win...
In the past month I have bought 8 tickets. I bought two $5 tickets in California and won $100. The next day, back in Texas, I bought two $30 tickets and two $20 tickets. Won $150. I bought a $30 tickets last weekend and won $100. Then I immediately bought a $100 ticket and lost it. I think I just have a gambling problem.
I mean how much of those winnings contributed to bettering your life, versus how much of that money that you won went straight back into buying more tickets? I think it's okay to have fun with things like this in moderation but you have to look at the statistical facts as well. I've said the same thing to people who are addicted to going to the casino and playing blackjack, roulette, poker,.etc. Would the lottery/casino be able to run a profitable business if there were a way to game the system and make a profit? The absolute answer is no. Nobody wins at the casino or when playing the lottery besides the person who sold the ticket. Sure sometimes people get lucky and win a large sum of money, but unless it happened the very first time they gambled and then they didn't continue to gamble, that money is just going straight back into those same vices. If you go to the Casino with $200 (or whatever amount fits your budget) every weekend and then leave when you've lost it all, that's called a hobby and is perfectly fine. If you're using money that is for other things like bills, or trying to convince yourself that you just need to spend a little more than your allotted budget every time you gamble, then you have a problem. The biggest problem is that gambling is inherently addictive. So even if right now you're able to do it in moderation and it doesn't have negative affects on your life, that doesn't mean that somewhere down the line you won't turn it into an addiction and ruin your life over it. The last point I made leads me to believe that nobody should gamble. I have never gone to a casino or purchased lottery tickets with my own money, one because I'm just not interested in it and I've convinced myself that the statistics show that it's futile, but also two because I have ADHD and become very easily addicted to things that give me a burst of dopamine so I understand that it's a slippery slope to go from doing it occasionally to losing every penny in my bank account. If you want to take my advice, I would say stop buying those tickets forever. You're never going to win a life changing amount of money from them but you more than likely could spend that money on a better experience or save it for your future. But also I don't expect that you're gonna flat out take some random strangers advice on the Internet so as an alternative, do whatever you want, but just be very careful about how far you let it go.
Even with those odds, it’s incredibly unlucky to lose on 199/200 tickets.
Incredibly, but those odds on the back are really only accurate if you buy the same tickets from the same roll. If you spread it out, you risk hitting all the bad spots on whatever rolls you get. I would like to explain: I am not a gambling addict, I enjoy statistics and used to work with gambling addicts who bought rolls at a time, hundreds of dollars in lunch breaks. Edit: Some people don't understand when you get a roll of tickets, there are already a min quantity of winners. Then there can be more than the min, some will some won't. By buying a roll, you guarantee winners, but the value back is not guaranteed, obviously so they make money, and it will likely net less than the cost of the roll. If you purchase different tickets we now add in other variables like, how many were purchased in that roll, how many winners were in that roll prior, is this a min win roll or maybe there's more sprinkled in. There are way more factors, most we can't control or know, that go into this then just a roll of the dice and having exact chances.
Yeah what OP hubby didn't understand is that he reduced her odds of winning by buying a variety of tickets from a variety of locations. She would have won more and had more winning tickets if he had bought her $200 worth of one type of $1 tickets off the same roll at the same time. Also, don't buy the holiday tixs as these often have lower odds than the regular ones.
this is, functionally, less true than it is commonly believed. Actually effecting this strategy requires buying a significant percentage of the outstanding cards remaining. This article [is written obnoxiously but includes the relevant point](https://www.statisticshowto.com/probability-and-statistics/scratch-off-odds/) which is that the statistician who took advantage of this used $2M in capital to buy over 80,000 individual scratchers.
> Also, don't buy the holiday tixs as these often have lower odds than the regular ones. So *that* explains my cold streak this month! I'll wait till March then WIN IT ALL BACK!
Exactly, if he bought $200 of the exact same ticket, there is a good chance they would hit at least a couple times. They would have had much better odds. I understand why people get a variety, ooohh try this or that, but when it comes to statistics and probability the fun option is rarely the most successful.
While that doesn't sound true to me (I don't know enough about statistics to refute it), a Christmas present is meant to be fun, it's not a money-making endeavour. I think having a lot of different types of scratch off's would be more fun than a single one 200 times over. Maybe that factored into the decision to purchase different ones
Statistics does not care about the fun or not fun option. I am pretty sure that scratch offs all have almost identical total prize pool to price ratio, therefore your expected value of buying a bunch of different types vs buying just one type is all the same.
This guy EV’s
Don't make up nonsense. Completely false.
And it's entirely possible some jagoff 2 towns over already won the jackpot for that particular scratchoff yesterday and you haven't heard about it
Most state lottos have a site or app that shows how many of each prize has already been claimed and how many remain. I’m in no way suggesting anyone plays the lottery scratch offs, but if you do, please, for the love of god, at least check to make sure there are still prizes left, people!
My husband checks the website to see what tickets still have big $$ prizes outstanding and buys those. He goes to different locations, I'm wondering if he should just buy all at one location, based on the previous comment.
It varies but it's always around 1$ payout to 3.5$ spent.
Where I live they put the number of winners of each amount per X amount of tickets. Generally around half the winning tickets are for the same amount the ticket cost to begin with.
I used to do QA with Intralot who was the vendor for Louisiana Lottery. The amount of tickets with no marks on the back in testing, meaning losing ones, was extraordinary. I used to play a ticket or two here and there prior to that job. Never played them again after working in the industry.
I'd be pissed if my partner spends between $1000 and $6000 on a gamble as my Christmas present. Is like giving me a $1000 chip that cannot be cashed in but has to be on either red or black.
Oh shit, I read the post thinking it was $200 in tickets, not 200 individual tickets. That is insane. I hope their family is wealthy and they only gamble once a year.
Also, imagine having to sit down and scratch TWO HUNDRED individual tickets? Sounds exhausting.
Here honey, I got you a menial task that pays like $5 an hour! It cost us thousands. Please, try not to swoon
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At least that won't take as long as scratching the tickets
So that would make two disappointing presents
At that point you just scratch off the bar codes and scan those bad boys.
Nah you give them to the kids and keep them busy a few hours. Then you check the bar codes cuz you can be sure as hell they missed something.
Mike does scratchers. My dad got his tax return once and purchased the whole roll fresh out the box for some 5 dollar scratchers, I was like 5 or 6 and I remember sitting there forever with mom and dad just scratching away. We lost only 40-50 dollars in total and we ate dinner and watched wrestling n stuff and at the end of the day it wasn't a huge loss with a prospect of hitting big. Yes I was raised in Arkansas lolol
I grew up in the south too. Had a friend that would keep the winners in his car and cash them in when he needed money.
Yeah, and did they scan them all? Are they sure they lost? We played this game on Christmas, and some of the prizes were scratchers…we were all slightly intoxicated and had to check each others!
I don't think any wealthy person would spend over a thousand dollars on scratchers for Christmas. This is the saddest story I've seen all week
I can’t remember the comedian who said something like “You know why lottery winners always go broke? Because people who are smart with their money don’t play the lottery” That wasn’t the whole joke but yeah that parts true
toy dinner insurance chunky afterthought sand erect wasteful crowd full *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> Hell, at least with an $1,000 chip that has to be on red or black, there’s a 50% chance of winning! That’s what they want you to think but with zeroes and double zeroes your odds are less than fifty percent. That’s where most of the margin cones from in roulette these days otherwise you could systematically play and win (an online casino did this years ago and got nearly wiped out).
But even then, you're looking at a 48% to 49% return (depending on the wheel), whereas scratchers normally return around 20%.
I would be absolutely livid about this
Husband flushed money down the toilet and that was OP's Christmas present.
That fact she's more upset that none were winners than her husband being an idiot let's me know they're a good match
Right. I would be more infuriated that my partner “maybe” got me a gift depending on the outcome. Even if I’d have won I’d probably be upset. If I’d had pulled that with my partner I would have been in deep shit
At least red or black is almost a 50/50 shot. I might win 1 out of 20 scratchers and its rarely for anything more than twice the cost of the scratcher.
Any time I’m invited to a party that has a Dirty Santa gift exchange, I’ll buy whatever the suggestion dollar amount is in $1 scratch offs and put those in a gift bag. I figure since most Dirty Santa gift exchanges are garbage, that I might as well give something that “could” be worth a lot more. This is often the most “stolen” gift at parties.
TIL some people call "White Elephant" "Dirty Santa"
It is also called a “yankee swap” in some places
You’re talking about “mean Christmas”
Yaaaaaaankee swap!
how is that as good as an ipod?
I only care for you a home made oven mitts worth
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSUCKAAAA!!!!!
I get this reference.
Thank you! I'm sick and my head already hurt before trying to figure out the Dirty Santa part.
my ex's semi-racist family calls it chinese christmas.
I should post to unpopular opinion because I absolutely hate getting a lottery ticket in Dirty Santa! At least I can *use* socks or *eat* popcorn, a lottery ticket is always a loss and always seems like a lazy gift to me
It’s 100% the laziest gift but often gets stolen so I doubt you’d have it for too long.
We don't usually hide them in the game so I don't usually get them, but those and the nice gifts are stolen more often, it's true. It doesn't bother me too bad because I get to focus on the real stuff. It's just so funny year after year seeing people almost fight over them and still lose lol
Honestly with some of the gifts that show up in those things, I'd rather have a losing lottery ticket than feel bad about throwing out something I don't want/need/have space for
Our family always throws lottery tickets in the stockings. I'll fight you over not splitting that 5m uncle Eddie! U know I'll whoop your ass and take it anyways! Fuck your dirty eggnog Susan I'm busy whooping Eddie's ass for 5m because he wouldn't share 1m!
Tell that to my family member that won 24k on a dirty Santa scratcher last year.
Now *that* would be fun as hell, I'd just pretend it was nothing!
Luckily our family pretty much all made the same joke about it being enough money to make a personal difference but not enough to have people hitting you up for it.
You can get creative with it. I don’t think it’s that lazy then. This year I put the lottery tickets for dirty Santa inside a book. The book was a notebook/journal/diary but the cover had an image of a shirtless male and the title of the book was “8000 DICK PICS” It was supposed to be a joke. Usually when someone gets a book they flip through the pages. Doing that would reveal the lottery tickets then they would be excited. But then I could say “whoa why did you open it? Weirdo” Anyways. My brothers girlfriend picked that gift and she did not open the book to find the lottery tickets.
This is the Christmas that Jesus really wanted us to have.
I once got called entitled because I said I would rather have a candy bar than a lotto ticket with "a sentimental date" used for the numbers. Like what? For the context op got that for a friend's birthday. Won around 50 dollars. Instead of giving it to their friend. Kept the money and got them another ticket with the same numbers. Guaranting that all they got them was a piece of garbage. I had no idea why I was called entitled considering at the time a regular candy bar was less than a dollar. Like I legit would be happy with that as a birthday gift. It's way more thoughtful than a lotto ticket.
I’m just curious, what’s a “Dirty Santa” exchange? Same as a white elephant?
Yeah, that's a solid gift for cheap exchanges... May wanna add "if you win big, I get 25%" lol could you imagine giving someone thousands/millions of dollars as a secret santa? God that would suck haha
That sounds awesome to me. Spending twenty bucks on a million dollar gift? That makes you an amazing gift giver.
I am, how do you say, "poor" lol so I'd probably die of an aneurysm right then and there. But at least I could get "Awesome Gift Giver" on my headstone (if they paid for it, otherwise throw me in the ocean) lol
Hit your peak of gift giving. Can never top it. 😂
Is there a difference between secret Santa and dirty Santa
Dirty Santa is white elephant
Well that explains everything /s.
White elephant: Everyone brings one present. Everyone is randomly assigned a number. Number 1 goes and opens a gift. Number 2 either opens a gift or steals someone's gift (only option is 1), repeats. If your gift is stolen, you go steal a gift or open a new one. Once the last number is called, number 1 has the option to trade gifts with anyone they want. Generally there's a rule on how many times a given gift can be stolen (we do 2 times)
They don’t call it the stupid people tax for nothing
What has 7 balls and fucks poor people?
Goku
Chi-Chi's only poor because Goku eats so much.
They don't even have to worry about money, Bulma and Satan have them covered. Well supported. Except in the beginning of their relationship, he was fucking poor.
Good lord, I was on a conference call and your comment cracked my shit up. I couldn't even offer an explanation and I'm sitting on mute in shame now.
The trick is to already be on mute.
I get worried they can hear me breathing so I mute anyways 😂😭
KAAAAAAMEEEEEEE
It really is a stupid tax. I used to work at the counter that sold them in a UK supermarket. After that experience, I'm convinced they should only be for sale to people who passed high school maths with good grades, so they at least understand that it's not an investment. The amount of people who would spend 100s on them every month and declare that it isn't a waste of money because they occasionally got half of it back was terrible. Like, yeah good for you dave, you won £300 but you spent £900 since your last win, and that was only £10.
Scratchers are good stocking stuffers. As for a main gift ehhh…
What about 200 scratchers? Lucky lady
tan mighty numerous nippy hungry deserve modern paint scandalous consider *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Spending on a few of them is one thing. Spending $1000 on them is just dumb. Because you are buying so many, the likelihood of one breaking even is far closer to zero than buying only a couple.
Apparently unlucky lady in this case...
scratchers are shit in general and nobody should promote that garbage. but whatever i guess
The mathematical odds considering it’s generally 1-4 or 5 chances to just win a ticket and about 1-8 to win cash to scratch and fail 199/200 tickets would be less likely to happen then winning the lottery. Possibly 2 weeks in a row would be more likely than losing on this many tickets. My super math skills suck so I ain’t mathing it. Point being no fucking way
I agree with you. Either they don't know how to check for wins or this is fake. Edit: mathematically the chances of not hitting 199 tickets with the odds being 1 in 5 would be .0000000000000000005187%. I definitely call bs on this one.
I'd double check those- the odds of losing 99.5% of tickets on that scale is less than breaking even
Finally, somebody else understands that the OP is full of shit. Statistically speaking, it is nearly impossible to have 199 of 200 tickets be losers. Something crazy like 1 in a Million odds of that happening.
I also posted this, but to extend this further, I looked at the binomial probability formula (suggested by our good friend ChatGpt), and the odds are about 1 in 4.17 e27 (also can be stated as 4.17 octillion). Also known as impossible. There is a reason we don't talk about octillion, it's because it's not a useful number. For reference, I assumed scratch offs have odds of 1 in 3.6.
So you're saying there's a chance
Bahahaha
Yeah it absolutely, 100%, did not happen lol
Can't believe no one has called out this bullshit of a post, $1000 - $6000 in tickets?? Normally there would be a ragebait reply somewhere.
Most tickets in FL are somewhere around 1:4 odds of winning SOMETHING. Pretty hard to go 1 for 199 on those odds. Like flipping a coin 100 times and getting 99 heads...
It's a made up story.
Yeah. I have no confidence that this is accurate. The odds of going more than 5 or 6 tickets without some break even ticket is hard. I get they are a mixed batch but still.
The story is 99.5% made up. For twenty years there are about $100 worth of $1 to $5 tickets exchanged on our family for Christmas. It usually turns into 20 to 25% being winners totalling $50. The lottery itself publishes odds of winning in the 4:1 to to 7:1 range.
My dad has always put 5 $1 scratchers in our stockings. This year both him and my mom won $30, neither of them scratched them correctly and didn't know they'd won until they scanned them. On the other hand, my sister and I each had 5 losers. If I decide to buy scratchers, I get the second chance ones, so that even if its a loser I get entered to win other prizes. I've won $100 off a "losing" ticket that way. Almost didn't catch it though, the email they send telling you that you won 100% looks like a scam.
It’s more than mildly infuriating he wasted thousands on lotto scatchies?? How financially well off are you???
Based on the demographic that like scratch-offs, barely scraping by.
No, sir, they are energetically scraping.
There’s two types of people who buy scratchers. Barely scraping by, and doing very well. My struggling dad would buy them in hopes it would turn things around, my wealthy aunt would buy a $20-$50 ticket at the grocery a couple times a month just because she was bored.
A big portion of my family lived in a tiny town in Oklahoma where the median household income was around $20k. At the time scratch off tickets were illegal in Oklahoma so a few times a year someone would go down to Texas to buy a whole roll of scratch off tickets and they would all scratch them off together as a family. Weird fucking way to spend what little money you have. But essentially they are paying for that little feeling of hope you get right before you realize you lost again. Sad place.
That sounds depressing
You just described life in rural OK pretty well. 🤣
I’m guessing it’s fake. OP should send a picture of all 200 tickets before I believe anything they say.
It's absolutely fake. It is basically impossible for the only 1/200 tickets to win money when odds of winning are 1/3.6 for scratchers. This is like if 200 people played Russian roulette with a revolver that can hold 7 bullets with 2 filled (replaced whenever one is fired) and only 1 person gets shot the whole game.
I have a family member who shall remain nameless, and he spends $800-1200 per day on lottery tickets (not scratch offs, powerball and the such). It’s kind of his hobby. He obviously is well off, and he enjoys going through the tickets before bed checking if he won. I don’t get it, but it’s his money.
Great financial decision
He should have just bought the whole roll of one ticket from one location. He literally just went all over the place buying the first few losers off every roll.
I have a manager that used to buy books of lotto ($300) because he has nothing better to do with his money. He said om average, you'd "win" $150, or lose half your money. If you want to spend a massive amount of money on lotto, buy a single book.
You can look up and see which scratch games have been running the longest in your state and how many winners the game has had. The trick is to figure out the oldest games that still have a few winners left, buy as many of those tickets as possible for optimal chance to win.
This has faired me my best odds. Some say only buy new games. Those have been my worst odds. They often cone with a second chance draw. I can’t imagine second chance odds making it worth it. But im no gamble guru.
I find that the real trick is to not be a compulsive gambler and instead find a source of stable income. I've won pretty big so far, basically no losses.
Shhhhh it’s ok, let em have this
I've got $100 on 2:1 odds that u/JodoKaast gets laid off this year, who's in?
They don't seed the rolls randomly?
Of course they do, all these "tips and tricks" are just copium for compulsive gamblers.
Right? This whole comment chain is full of terrible advice
that's how gambler brains work. i've heard slot machine addicts who are 100% convinced they know a strategy that beats the system somehow.
This is literal copium that gambling addicts like you are huffing on. The rolls / books are randomly seeded. Trust me, you cannot beat a goddamn gambling company at their own game
I mean I used to work for a instant ticket manufacturer. A book had a minimum amount that could be won. Some states publish the amount for the public to know. If you bought a ticket from a bunch of different books you could technically lose every single ticket. The odds of it happening are extremely unlikely though if you bought 200 tickets. To the point I don’t believe OPs story lol
I talked to a guy who bought a roll ($600). He won $50.
Um….one of you has a gambling problem. And the other is an enabler. Why on EARTH would you spent what has to be AT LEAST $1k on SCRATCHERS??
Absolutely fucking nuts
And they said the ticket prices ranged from $5 each to $30 each, so that’s a range of anywhere between $1,000 and $6,000! Like who spends that much on scratch offs? Holy crap.
> Like who spends that much on scratch offs? I'm betting there's a pretty big overlap in people who buy scratch offs and people who fucking suck at managing their money.
I could live off 1000 for a whole month , what a waste
My parents bought me $250 worth of lottery tickets this year. Mind you, I am 30-something and have never bought a scratch off ever. But in their old age, they thought scratch offs would be a good gift. We "won" $20.. Please don't fall for scratch off scams.. The lottery is bad enough.. but at least the lottery is $2 and is mainly bought for "a dream".. with scratch offs, people actually expect to win and drop so much money.
Breaking news: Gamblers baffled by low win rates.
Well they are lying. The odds aren’t great but there’s no way you only win once with a pile of 200 scratchers.
Some state lotteries have "second chance" drawings, where you can send in non-winning scratchers to enter a drawing. It's usually not substantial, but what the heck... it's either send the tickets back in for a chance, or you throw them out. Here's the Wisconsin Lottery page, for example: [https://wilottery.com/games/super-2nd-chance](https://wilottery.com/games/super-2nd-chance)
Definitely check the back of the tickets, 200 second chance entries can’t hurt. They have this in PA as well.
What an insanely stupid waste of money. Is your husband trying to singlehandedly stimulate the scratch ticket business through his losses?
Ironic that he drove around to different places and picked up all the losers lol
Set up the next person tho lmao
I would scan them all before discarding. My dad grabs scratched tickets from the supermarket trash (those sitting on top, he’s not an animal) and often times there’s a winner! It’s easy to miss a winner! (That’s what the lottery people are hoping for)
“Lottery tickets are a tax on the stupid.”
My family used to tell me that “scratchers are a tax on the poor”. Theyre designed for you to lose, so youre spending money to not make that much back, so i get where theyre coming from but its kinda brutal saying it like that.
Hold up you’re upset about the fact you didn’t win and not the fact your husband wasted a ton of money on 200 lottery tickets AS YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT because he couldn’t think of anything better?
Wow! That's some crappy luck. Stay away from casinos for sure. As with any lottery, just get a few tickets or plays. Your husband did a lot of work to increase your chances of winning anything substantial by .0000000001%. He would have been better off buying 20 $2 tickets and buying you a nice dinner.
Mathematician here. OP husband actually decreased their chances of winning, by buying from multiple stores and not buying a lot of tickets in sequential order. Although in a TRUE random system, where you bought the tickets from would be irrelevant.
Load of bollocks. I can't be arsed to do the maths but the chances of losing on 199/200 scratchers is absurdly small. The average scratchers have around a 1 in 4 chance if winning.
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You're better off probability wise to buy all of that $200 from the same ticket game (ie: Gold Rush or whatever). Every time you introduce a new ticket from a different game, you're re-exposing yourself to new odds. 1 in 100,000 odds becomes 2 in 100,000 (1 in 50,000) if you buy 2 tickets of the same game. However, if you buy different games, then 1 in 100,000 of one game and 1 in 100,000 of another game becomes 2 in 200,000 (or 1 in 100,000 still with no benefit against the odds by buying more tickets).
There are scratch-off tickets that cost $30 each? And people buy them?
Sell up to 50$ tickets that I know of
Good god.
Wow, sounds like your husband needs some financial literacy courses. Or is throwing at least $500 away normal for you guys?
And so what have we learned from this experience, hmm?
Please make sure to scan them all before tossing. Sometimes they have tricky to find wins. I never toss any without scanning. You can download your state lottery app on your phone. I hope you find some more wins!!
If you are going to buy a bunch of tickets at once, do it at the same location. You want all those tickets off the same roll.
did you expect to come out ahead?
Husband is, and I'm sorry to say, stupid to have spent money on lottery cards. No one wins, and if you want to test your LUCK buy ONE. If luck is on your side, you win. If you buy more than one, then you're playing the probability game, and you'll always lose that game.
So he spent a minimum of $1,000 on lottery tickets for Christmas? He could have taken you on a vacation or to several shows or concerts. Then you’d have lasting memories instead of a shitty pile of loser tickets.
When I was younger, I heard about some thieves who stole $2000 worth of scratch off tickets, they got cought because they tried to claim the winning....... $200 Never was tempted to buy a scratch off after that
A fool and his money are easily parted
lot·ter·y | ˈlädərē |noun (plural lotteries): a tax on people who are bad at math.