The Lottery and Gambling Thread


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JDTAY

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Bought a Carolina Pick 3 ticket for the first time today and let the computer select my numbers for me. Got 3-7-6.

The draw just happened a few minutes ago, and was 3-7...-9.

So close to a Pyra preorder, yet so very far. :(
 
You're not likely to earn enough to buy a Pyra through gambling, I'm afraid (odds are you will lose more than you 'earn' over time). If you have cash to spare maybe fair enough to try (and good luck), but I think it would be more rewarding to give something to charity instead.
 
I am willing to accept any quantity of money from anyone, and to give you excitement I will even tell you that you almost won something. :p

Whenever I have gone to a casino with family it was extremely difficult for me to throw away any money. To make it easier I would feed slot machines and pretend like I was using it to pay for the drinks they would bring me. I guess I wasn't really pretending. It is just hard for me to do such things.

Same for the lottery. Back when I was a kid I might rarely ask for one of the scratch off thingies if I got to keep whatever money I won. I made a little off of those, although I doubt I won more than the total that was spent on them.

The one positive I see for some government backed lotteries is that some of that money is supposedly used toward education. NC is one of those, so in a sense buying those is giving to a charity.
 
Bought a Carolina Pick 3 ticket for the first time today and let the computer select my numbers for me. Got 3-7-6.

The draw just happened a few minutes ago, and was 3-7...-9.

So close to a Pyra preorder, yet so very far. :(

Since the winning numbers are chosen randomly, the idea of a near-miss is an illusion. 369 is just as bad as any of the other losing numbers.

Perhaps more importantly, consider why the lottery exists in the first place: to make profit for the people running it. This means that the average payout will always be less than the ticket price. The statistical best-estimate of your winnings is negative. i.e. You'll lose money.*

Now, I appreciate that some people find gambling exciting, and that that makes the long-term loss of money worthwhile. However, there are other exciting things you could do. Some of them are healthy, socially/environmentally responsible and free. Some of them help you learn new skills and meet interesting people. Compared to those, buying lottery tickets is a mug's game.

* The one exception to this that I can think of is premium bonds, where your initial outlay is invested by the organisers, and the prizes are funded by returns on those investments.
 
Several years ago I was in charge of a lottery pool at work: collect $20 from everyone, buy a buttload of tickets, try to retire early.
Most people would've just gone with a bunch of quick-picks: what kind of a fool would actually choose to select several dozen numbers? This fool.
But I couldn't just go with regular random, oh no, I wanted to try something different. I threw 10 years of numbers at a neural network to see what popped out the other end.
Surprisingly it ended up being better than random. It was still losing, but we were losing less than we should've been, consistently hitting 3 and 4 numbers (for small prizes of free plays and $30-60) more often than statistical chance said we should've.
Ultimately I determined that the neural net wasn't actually clairvoyant in any way, it had simply solved an optimization problem: it was picking minimally overlapping combinations across the dozens of picks we had every week, thus slightly improving our odds against a truly random selection.
 
Neuronal network? Dafuck is that even?
Did a 400 lines lua script once. Improvement was 3%. Not bad for something that should be impossible according to mathematicans.
 
Neuronal network? Dafuck is that even?
A neural network is a simulation of a computational graph which mimicks the bahaviour of neurons in the brain. I.e. neurons become active when neighbours are active and there is a sufficiently strong connection between them. It is a commonly used technique for creating artificial intelligence.
 
Hey guys, I bought a seven day Carolina Cash 5 ticket through the official North Carolina Education Lottery website on Sunday. And lo, on the fourth day, did I finally win money. 2 of 5 numbers equals... a whole dollar! Just six more needed to break even. :p

@Wally I may need help.
 
Reminds me of that time when the computer knew beforehand which ball will drop:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...n-drawn-machine-sparking-accusations-fix.html

Also, one lottery I know donates to the Clintan Foundation (yes, this is a very bad thing).... so beware.

@JDTAY: You might want to calculate and consider your Break-Even point


@rygD: Here is a though: How about reversing it?

Thus, making your own lottery ticket; writing your numbers on the back of an envelope. Inside the envelope you put the money you supposedly would invest in a real ticket (15 euro's at the moment).
Then, IIF you win, take out the amount you won, say, 10 euro. So every month you play, more money goes into the envelope. *(in theory, you COULD get into negative numbers, but you put an I.O.U. note inside your envelope for those cases). Statistics say that there should be around 100 euro inside after 1 year. Thus, playing for 10 years would yield 1000 euro in your envelope...

Ain't got time for that? Fine, play with 100 lottery tickets at once (use @ible 's link to generate the numbers). If you do not have the cash to "buy" 100, just make paper bills and put them inside the envelope.

But wait (for Dutch people only)... if you win more than 454 euro... you need to pay taxes! 29% over the amount you won... now the law is skewed here, you should have gotten a permit beforehand... so now you are doing something illegal and can go to jail for making your envelope lottery (and not paying for the permit or not paying taxes or counterfeiting money)! So keep it hushed and don't post your results, just in case!
 
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@Wally I may need help.

Stop bringing me into your antics...

popcorn.0.0.jpg
 
Wow! Congratulations on turning your life around in only 16 days from your last financial crisis.
It's impressive when someone can get on top of their bills, put a little away for a rainy day and still have money to throw at gambling.

This post is dripping with sarcasm. Use it to contemplate your self centred post and reflect on where you are in life.
 
@pimaster: This attention seeking happens each time he gets a paycheck, and half a month later, when the money dwindles. So do not get angry, that's bad for you. Many tried hammering sense into that boy, but at some point, gave up. The best thing you can do? Click on the "ignore thread" button, because it will save you time and annoyance... and that will make you happy...
 
Typical humans always wanting things that are bad for you. You should follow the example of us Blortzians, we were recently voted the most well adjusted beings in the tri-galaxy sub area by the star league of astral entities, beings and creatures.
 
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