A prolific gambler regularly tells my father that the “best bet in all of gambling” is the $10 scratch-off ticket. I’m not a gambler, never have been, but wanted to test the accuracy of that proclamation. So… I’m purchasing one $10 scratch-off every weekend for a year, and posting the results here. I mean, we won’t be able to know if it’s the actual best bet, but after a while we’ll certainly know if it’s a good one. Wish me luck!
Week Number | Date | Money Out | Money In | Balance |
1. | January 25, 2021 | $10 | $20 | + $10 |
2. | February 1, 2021 | $10 | $0 | Even |
3. | February 8, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $10 |
4. | February 15, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $20 |
5. | February 22, 2021 | $10 | $10 | - $20 |
6. | March 1, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $30 |
7. | March 8, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $40 |
8. | March 15, 2021 | $10 | $20 | - $30 |
9. | March 22, 2021 | $10 | $20 | - $20 |
10. | March 29, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $30 |
11. | April 5, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $40 |
12. | April 12, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $50 |
13. | April 19, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $60 |
14. | April 26, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $70 |
15. | May 3, 2021 | $10 | $50 | - $30 |
16. | May 10, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $40 |
17. | May 17, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $50 |
18. | May 24, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $60 |
19. | May 31, 2021 | $10 | $10 | - $60 |
20. | June 7, 2021 | $10 | $10 | - $60 |
21. | June 14, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $70 |
22. | June 21, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $80 |
23. | June 28, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $90 |
24. | July 5, 2021 | $10 | $10 | - $90 |
25. | July 12, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $100 |
26. | July 19, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $110 |
27. | July 26, 2021 | $10 | $0 | - $120 |
Totals | $270 | $150 | - $120 |
First? Quit while you’re ahead
A fool and his money are soon departed.
You’d have better luck flipping ammunition.
Negativity! This is a scientific experiment, gentlemen. I’m not gambling, I’m attempting to prove or disprove a hypothesis. See? It’s highbrow.
To do a proper experiment, you need a control group. What you need to do is give a random person $10, and have them buy a ticket at the same time. This eliminates your bad luck from the equation.
In fact, if you sent me $520 right now, I will be able to tell you exactly how bad your luck is.
Good idea. You send me some $$$ and I’ll guy a few!
Starting off strong
(Damn, I don’t think I’ve commented here in the past decade! ?)
Welcome back, Kristin!
Every Saturday morning I see people lining up to buy those out of a vending machine at Giant Eagle. Some times it is people bringing in buckets of change. They dump the change in the coin machine, get the money, and then buy the tickets. I also see some of the employees there buy tickets every time they go on break or go out to pick up the carts. I don’t see this so much now due to the virus. It was also a regular thing to see really old people lining up at the service desk to get their lottery tickets. I’ve seen them get quite upset if the person behind the counter did not get them what they wanted quickly.
The best thing since sliced bread is the credit card readers at the gas pumps. I used to get so mad going in to pay for my gas and getting stuck behind grandma trying to decide what scratch offs to buy.
That’s a good start. I hope he is right. I am not a gambler but I go to meetings for other things. So I would have to be careful also 😉
Hey Flannel Butt, are you buying the same brand of ticket each time or jumping around?
The arbitrary rules I set up for myself: purchase tickets from a human (not a machine) at the same store where possible, and just go with whatever ticket they hand me. The first two were different. -FB
Hi. That seems a bit narrow. Why not buy them from other, luckier places too?
Perhaps you might want to add a ‘balance’ column to show your net profit so far.
Great idea! Done.
“You can’t stop modern science. Can’t stop it. Can’t stop science. Can’t be stopped, no way, no how.”
– George Costanza
Will this lottery experiment be attached to a weekly email? I will absolutely watch the results of this every week if I get an email about it, but there’s no way I’m going to remember to check in on it otherwise. I’m very curious to see how it goes. I may just try it myself.
Yes, I’ll make sure it’s linked in the weekly dispatch. Thanks for checking it out!
Awesome. I actually started one myself. Week one, I’m down $10, but spirits are still high. I love to gamble, as long as the stakes are very low. I promise not to update you weekly. But I will give you a six month update in August and a final. Assuming I stay with it, which is no small assumption. I hope I do, though – I think it will be super fun on the weeks I scratch off a winner. And every week has the potential to make the whole damn thing a winner. Curious how optimistic I’ll be in a couple of months.
Keep us updated! And good luck.
I know nothing about scratch-off tickets, so what is the max you can win with a $10 one?
The one I bought on Saturday had a max prize of $500,000.
Does the advising “prolific gambler” live in WV rather than, say, Maui? The only prolific gambler I personally know literally sold the family silver he was so good this gambling lark. He knew how to win, how to beat the system, he would endlessly claim.
Interesting experiment though! Similar with penny stocks would give more data to play with if you’re into that.
He’s a guy my parents know in Florida. He’s probably gambling in some way right now.
Someone gave me one for Christmas. I won’t $100. Turned that in for more tickets, won another $75 and a bunch of free tix I haven’t scratched yet. So far I’ve lost nothing because I didn’t invest anything. Because of this I’m going to invest the winnings into more tickets. Hopefully I can come out ahead.
Does WV Lottery publish the status of it’s scratch off games? NJ does, so you can see which games’ high value prizes have been claimed, and how many prizes remain. If so, you could bias your experiment, by only buying games with a higher population of available prizes.
I’m in Pennsylvania, and yeah they do that here too. But I’ve been allowing the cashier at the convenience store to choose for me. So far that hasn’t worked out so well.
I’m gonna guess that after 52 weeks you will be down about $260.
If I had to bet on the over under, I would bet $10 that you will be worse off than that.
It’s not going well. But we’re still early in the process. I still have (dwindling) faith.
Just one more ticket and it will all turn around! 😉
Haha. Exactly.
Well, after 1/2 a year, you are doing $20 better than I expected.
Better meaning less bad, a difference of degree, not direction.
Still, good luck
Winner Winner
Chicken Dinner!
There’s a big win coming up – I can feel it.