Life is Funny

Scratch ‘n Win, also known as Scratch off tickets are everywhere in North America.  They’re a lot of fun, because you’ll know instantly if you are a winner.

The problem is that often the majority of a winning ticket either results in winning your money back, a $1.00 more, or maybe a free ticket.

These simplistic break-even prizes just let the odds of winning seem a lot lower. When the Lottery Corporation or prints on the back of the ticket “odds of winning” — they include these petty prizes as a winner.
Now, I don’t know about you, but if I scratch a $5 ticket and see “congratulations $5 winner” — How is that really winning anything?

I would much rather discontinue these types of prizes. How many people will buy a scratch ticket in hopes that they will win their money back?  It doesn’t make sense. We’re all out there to at least double our money.

If I could choose between more often losing my money with ADDED chances of getting bigger prizes a lot less frequently, that would be fine for me.

For instance, say I buy 25 tickets over the course of a 3 month period.

Instead of getting 8 winners giving me my money back, I’d prefer to get 1 winner with 8X the money.

But the scratch lottery tickets that would do that would inevitably cause people to play less often.  If you won one big prize out of every 25 tickets, you’d probably be less likely to buy 25 more tickets over the next 3 month period.

So I guess, this system is by design. They want you to get the illusion that by winning more often, that the big one is just around the corner.

Moral of the story? When you’re feeling lucky, play the number drawn lotteries, like the Pick 6, or Lotto 6/49, etc. These ones atleast will net you a few million dollars if you win big. Unlike the scratch off tickets where the largest prize is something like $25,000 or so, and there are usually only a few big prizes in existence for that particular ticket.

What do you think?

Would you rather win less often, but bigger prizes?

OR

Would you rather win more often, but much smaller prizes?