<p>I think its rigged </p>
<p>or maybe I'm just a sore loser:(</p>
<p>I'd never waste my money playing the lottery.</p>
<p>Of course the lottery is rigged. How else would the state make money? I mean, it's not rigged in the sense that they know the numbers on every ticket sold and intentionally draw such that nobody wins, but rigged in the sense that you always have a -EV. That is, the amount of money your dollar will return is, on average < $1. </p>
<p>I never play the lottery except to buy a PowerBall ticket when it gets to some absurd number like over $100 mil...I stick to poker and sports betting to get my fix.</p>
<p>I've never done it, and I never plan to.
it may not be rigged, but it's still extremely unlikely to ever win.</p>
<p>I had one experience that convinced me not to buy lottery tickets. We won a radio station contest that gave us 1,000 lottery tickets. Half scratch-off, half Powerball. I knew when I bought one ticket at the convenience store, the odds were low... but in a thousand tickets, there should be a few big winners, right? Wrong.</p>
<p>We netted something like $350 total from hours of scratching tickets and comparing numbers. The biggest winner was one ticket for $50. Still, that's $350 more than we started with, right? Wrong again. We got an IRS 1099 form showing that we had been given $1000 by the radio station, and had to pay state and federal taxes that ate up almost all of our winnings.</p>
<p>I think most state lotteries pay out 40-50 cents on the dollar, not great odds. I've bought only a few tickets since that eye-opening experience. Although I knew the odds to begin with, all that scratching really drove the point home!</p>
<p>The day I turned 18, I went and bought a lottery ticket. I had a dream that I got one with certain colors on it and won, so I made sure to buy one with those colors. I paid $5 for the ticket and I won $10. It was awesome. I haven't bought another one since.</p>
<p>no...i'm too young</p>
<p>No, but I'm so desperate for money to pay for a $3,000/month apartment the size of a shoebox - that I might start.</p>