Illinois lottery was recently removed from the mega millions and powerball jackpot games because the state is in debt and can't pay the winners.

Over the last 3 weeks I have degened and purchased 40, $10 scratch offs. All from various stores / locations.

All of them are a 30% chance to at least break even and win $10, and I have lost all of them. They have been scanned at the stores to verify if it was human error.

This is either the worst streak ever, or perhaps Illinois back loaded the tickets for the winners because they are in debt.

Possible class action law suit?

you ran bad over a sample of 40 in a losing(-ev) game? Wow please do tell more

Do you have any idea what the odds of losing 40, 30% chances in a row are? That's a little more than running bad.

You might be asking the wrong question...

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/27/news...get/index.html

Move up to where they respect your scratches.

You realise you being born was roughly 1 in 400 quadrillion odds of your dads single sperm containing part of you connecting with your moms egg containing the other part of you and unfortunately you won. How can you complain about losing something 40 times in a row

I live in IL and have played scratch offs for the last 20 years. They are negative EV big time. I think if you spend $100 you will average something like $50-$60 return

You are much better off going to the casino. Much like a well run casino, they have no reason to rip people off more than the 40% or so they already get.

I go through times where I don't buy a ticket for a year, then the next year buy 1 or 2 $5-$20 tickets a day. I've won $500 3 times and never anything more. I think I have run above average for sure yet still lost my fair share. I don't think the lotto is scamming more then they are already legally obligated because they win enough money already and how can you beat 40% gross profits.

You have either incurred a terrible bad streak or are forgetting a couple of the wins.

The odds are ~ 1 in 2.5 Million

I have all of the losing tickets saved. There are 40 of them. I know it's a negative EV game, the degen in me will stop once I get a single $10 winner.

My view is, the state can't pay the jackpot winnners, so they back loaded all the scratch off winners to the tail end of their ticket block.

no the odds are 1 in 3.50million

I for one am shocked that a gambling operation run by the state of Illinois might be a bit shady.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...209-story.html

Illinois Lottery's biggest scratch-offs didn't award 40% of grand prizes, Tribune finds

0.7 ^ 40 on my hand held calculator is showing as 0.0000004
which when inversed is a 1 in 2.5 million probability.

But the 4 on the calculator screen is the last available screen digit
so perhaps there is some rounding up going on and the real figure is 0.0000003?????
a number which when inversed results in your 1 in 3.5 million.

Edit: it would have to be 0.0000002????? so maybe your calc is wrong and my mine is right
or we are both wrong??

That basically says they end the games without selling all of the tickets / awarding all of the prizes. What a ****ing scam. That means the odds on the back of the tickets are completely false.

This corrupt lottery isn't getting a penny of my money again.

This thread proves that it should be illegal to sell scratch off lottery tickets to mentally challenged people.

They should clearly be banned in the UK IMO. The original idea of the UK' National Lottery in 1994 was a weekly draw to provide a chance to win life changing jackpot prizes for a small almost negligible stake whilst also raising money for good causes.

This ethos quite quickly deteriorated towards a vehicle for hardened gamblers and to becoming an increased risk and hazard to vulnerable people, by having multiple lottery draws per week and the proliferation of low ROI false hope scratchcards. Pretty disgusting behaviour by the government and by the lottery regulators IMO.

Cliffs:

1. OP spends $400 on lottery, knowing in his heart that he cannot lose
2. OP loses, takes revenge by making critical post on obscure website
3. ????
4. Winnar!

Your calculator has the math skills of someone who plays scratchoffs. Buy a different one, or just type it into WolframAlpha.

.7^40 = .000000636680576 =~ 1 in 1.57 million

40 down, 1.56996 million to go

I punched it in again and still it says 0.0000004! Lol

You're right there must be something wrong with it.
It is an Amazon basics model, could be the reason.

Get a lawyer.

gold

Lmao!


OP, go out of state and buy 40 more. Let 2p2 know how that turned out.

Inb4 Indiana's state lottery rigged???

Joke's on us, OP went out and bought another 40 scratchers and hit 5 jackpots.

He's too busy partying on a private island in the South Pacific with nude supermodels to reply.

It's a fraud. And because of that, your true odds are probably closer to 18% a ticket instead of 30%.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...209-story.html

I have not, and will not purchase another ticket. It's a fraud.