I Fail at Win

[andrewducker]

Waking up to an email from the national lottery telling you to check your account: Exciting!
Logging in to find that you've won a tenner: Somewhat less exciting!

I set up a subscription _ages_ ago, and 99% of the time I forget I even play the thing (I don't even know what my numbers are), but it potters away in the background anyway. It strikes me as the only sensible way to play (if you're going to).

Comments

[accordingly.livejournal.com]

Congrats :P
I found a lottery ticket on the ground yesterday. It wasn't a winner but it made me wonder what would happen if you found a big winning lottery ticket, if Camelot {is it still Camelot?} would let you keep it or if the other person would say they bought it. DILEMMA.

I like your icon. Penguins are my favourite thing ever.

[andrewducker]

It is still Camelot. And I think whoever owns the ticket gets to keep the money - so if someone was able to prove that you found it then they'd probably get the cash. Best keep it a secret :->

Glad you like the penguin. So long as you obey him too.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

There is no record of who purchases any particular ticket if it is bought in a shop. So the finder of said ticket would presumably be entitled to keep the winnings, unless the person who bought it could prove the bought that exact ticket.

I suppose if the shop had time-stamped CCTV that might be possible, but other than that I imagine it would be very hard to prove it was yours.

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

I do that whenever I get an email. My mind starts spending the money before I've even checked what I've won. Currently, its a spending spree at debenhams - I was there yesterday and they have all their nice christmassy clothes in.

[andrewducker]

I had, of course, already drafted my resignation letter before I got as far as checking the amount :->

[pisica.livejournal.com]

I don't play, and therefore I am never disappointed. :) When I do gamble it's for the fun of it, such as with my Grand National win.

I once found my grandmother's name on an Illinois website designed to keep track of unclaimed assets. (So if, say, granny had opened a bank account and forgotten about it, the state would keep the money for her heirs until someone claimed it.) Sadly, it was only a tiny bit of money from some insurance policy. Damn it. :)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

The new postcode lottery sounds pretty neat.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

As a child of the 80s, I reckon the only way to win is not to play.

It's been going what, thirteen or fourteen years? So that's about 700 weeks. If we add in the mid-week draw (can't remember when that started but it's not half so long) we probably get a round 1000 games or so for the purposes of illustration. The 'play every time' strategy will thus cost you £1000. Given that 50% of the ticket price goes on prizes, the expectation value for prizes is £500, and hence on average you'd be down £500 if you'd played every week. The 'never play' strategy gives you an expectation value (zero) that's £500 higher.

Another factor is the law of large numbers. The more you play, the more likely it is that your personal return will approach the expectation value. So if you're hoping for an unlikely result, you want to play extremely infrequently.

One might think that in the limit, your chances of winning are zero ('you have to be in it to win it'), which would suggest a strategy just short of that. Except that there is a non-zero chance of finding a discarded, uncontested winning ticket. Admittedly it's probably even smaller than 1 in 14 million, but the win chance never actually hits zero. 1 in 14 million, 2 in a hundred trillion, what's the difference? It's still basically Not Going To Happen. :-)

I've done really well with the 'never play' strategy - not only am I five hundred quid or so up against the expectation value for the 'play every time' strategy, I've gained hugely from Lottery-funded projects. (Which horrifies me, since although they're great things, I don't want them funded by such a regressive tax. But that's a separate rant.)