I play the lottery often...Every saturday and wednesday infact. I suppose the National Lotterys' campaign go to me; "You have an infinitely better chance of winning if you actually play"....or some jazz like that.

Anyway I (and millions of others) rarely hit my numbers...hence the lucritive industy.

I propose Chamelot comes up with a lottery sceme whereby you choose 43 out of the 49 numbers, and if the 6 you didn't choose get chosen, you win the jackpot.

This way, we can get some sort of satusfactions for not getting the numbers we picked chosen.

same odds really, but a little twist. I'm sure this would boost sales.
-- shinobi, Apr 07 2007

People are indeed more risk averse when it comes to gains than losses. (I.e., they try to hedge their bets when it comes to a chance of winning a lot, but they are more willing to go out on a limb when the risk is losing a lot). Thus, this idea has a lot of merit experimentally. For that I grant thee a bun.

However, logistically as it is now, it has a lot of issues. Payouts are always going to be low, though positive. This means that poor people are going to enter much more than the wealthy, because the wealthier you are, the less you care about a 1% increase in investment or whatever. And buying a larger share of tickets isn't the answer, because all lotteries have negative expected values, so buying more doesn't help you much here if you own a lot already.

Which leads to a problem - how do you get money out of people who lose when most of them don't have much money to begin with? If I only have $5, there's no reason for me to not buy 5 tickets. Worst case scenario, I lose my $5 in a 1 in 10,000 chance or whatever. because even if I hit the -$10,000 ticket, I dont have that much to lose...

How do you resolve that problem?
-- Smurfsahoy, Apr 08 2007


[Sfurfsahoy], I think you misunderstand. The probability of winning, and the size of the winnings, are the same as those of conventional lotteries.
-- spidermother, Apr 08 2007


Oh, I see. I'm pretty sure the example numbers weren't there before, but anyway, yeah I don't think this would really change sales at all. Actually it would just be more confusing, and annoying because youd have to sit there and watch the tv for 40x as long.
-- Smurfsahoy, Apr 08 2007


The downside of this (from the lottery's point of view) is that it would take people longer to fill out their ticket, having to mark 43 numbers rather than 6. Some people would probably be put off buying tickets if they had to do that.
-- imaginality, Apr 08 2007


imaginality. I suppose you would check the numbers you don't want to pick, and then the computer will print you the receipt in the negative form. yeah I guess this is a bit of a complicated idea.
-- shinobi, Apr 08 2007


But my fortune cookie only has six numbers on it. Where do I get the other thirty-seven?
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Apr 09 2007


It'd take too long to fill in the numbers.

Then the idea suggested that you pick the numbers you don't want picked sounds more like the what we have today except the meaning of the picked (or not picked numbers) has changed.
-- hooksta, Apr 09 2007


Great, now I'm stuck on line behind the old man who insists on penciling in his 43 numbers by hand instead of using the Quick Pick.
-- phundug, Apr 09 2007


Very ingenious! Its true- The odds would remain the same, however, people will think that their odds have increased. Much like school raffles that give you 10 tickets for $1. Even though they give everyone else the same 10 ticket chance, people think that they are getting an edge on the odds for the same price.
-- Jscotty, Apr 10 2007


... when in fact it's just a waste of paper.
-- theleopard, Apr 10 2007


Incidentally, Quick Draw (a Keno-like game available in NY) has something like this: 20 numbers are picked out of 80, and although your goal is to guess 10 of those 20, you also win if you guess 3 or fewer of them since that is so rare.
-- phundug, Apr 10 2007


In an old edition of 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue', Willy Rushton proposed the following method for winning the Lottery:-

First pick seven numbers. These are incredibly unlikely to come up so cross them out and pick another seven. These are also unlikely to come up so get rid of them as well. Continue picking groups of numbers and discarding them until you are left with just the last seven numbers, which will be the winning ones.
-- DrBob, Apr 11 2007



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