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When Scott Hoover bought a $5 scratch-off ticket in Virginia called “Beginner’s Luck” last summer, he carefully studied the odds. Even though he figured his chances of winning were a long shot, he felt the odds were reasonable.
Hoover, a business professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, wasn’t surprised when his tickets didn’t bring him the $75,000 grand prize, but he was shocked to learn the top prize had been awarded before he bought the ticket.
“I felt duped into buying these things,” Hoover said.
He discovered the Virginia State Lottery was continuing to sell tickets for games in which the top prizes were no longer available. Public records showed that someone had already won the top prize one month before Hoover played. He is now suing the state of Virginia for breach of contract.
Through a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act, Hoover’s lawyer was able to obtain records that showed the Virginia State Lottery sold $85 million in tickets for which no top prize was available…
Apparently, half the 42 states selling scratch-off lottery tickets will sell them even if the advertised big payoff has already been won.
For everyone that wins a million dollars, a million people had to lose a buck.Only after commissions, profits, overhead, secondary prizes, and whatever, 5 million people had to lose a buck for everyone that wins a million.
fools.
I’ve heard that when playing three card monty that the sponsor of the game actually hides the ball making it impossible to win.
How can that happen in a game played for money based on the sponsor taking the players money?
Doesn’t make any sense.
Of course the state will continue to sell those tickets,… they still want their pay-off!
Can someone explain to me why gambling is illegal in Illinois (and most other states) to protect the people when the biggest racket of all is run by the state itself?
Oh wait, I think I just answered my own question.
Just what we can expect from our public officials. Next time use KY!
One word: Duh!
“Playing the lottery” a.k.a. “voluntary taxation.”
If I ran the lottery in Virginia I’d reimburse this guy’s $5.00, offer to do the same for anyone else who could prove they had the same situation, and add additional disclaimer fine print to the tickets — problem solved.
This is worse than voting for someone who has zero chance of winning – like Huckabee in the primaries.
At least voting is fun, a chance to make a statement – and free.
It costs a buck to dream.
Then you get the shaft.
Aren’t there usually additional winnings besides the top value one? This guy already said he didn’t expect to win the top prize but now he’s pissed because he didn’t.
Anyone who’s a sucker enough to waste their money on odds so outrageous that they’d be more likely to be struck by lightening deserve to have their money taken.
At least play a slot machine or something. At least those odds are far better than a damn lottery. Sucker.
Guess this guy didn’t do his homework.
From “The New Yorker”, Voltaire’s Garden http://tinyurl.com/6j5bz7
“He was also, luckily, very rich, in no small part because of his participation in a bizarre swindle devised by a mathematician friend, who, back in 1728, realized that the French government had authorized a lottery in which the prize was much greater than the collective cost of the tickets. He and Voltaire formed a syndicate, collected all the money, and became moneylenders to the great houses of Europe.”
It may different in the US, but in Canada, they tend to ship out around 500,000 tickets per batch. If someone buys the winner in the first week, it seems kind of unrealistic to just recall the other 450,000 tickets when about 1/4 of them have prizes on them as well.
The tickets are printed at random, with a computer setting the appropriate winning tickets during the printing process.
In order for the process to work fairly, it is impossible for anyone, including the state and the company running the printer, to know when or if a “winning” ticket has been printed.
The state does not know if the “winning” ticket has been sold until someone claims the prize.
Maybe Virginia runs it differently, but here in Canada, the prize money for the instant-win tickets all comes from a single “pool” of money. So the “top” prize is always possible, but the odds of winning the top prize from a certain batch of tickets is constantly variable.
I miss the days when you had to fly to Los Vegas to get ripped off this way.
Are schools, are communities… is ANYONE better off because of the massive proliferation of legalized gambling?
Whats the problem here? It’s a voluntary tax that is paid by the stupid. When people stop being stupid, then the lottery will be forced to shut down.
This guy still had a chance to win something, so he has nothing to complain about. In playing scratch-off instead of Lotto, he should know that there is always the chance that the top prize is already gone.
GregAllen said:
“is ANYONE better off because of the massive proliferation of legalized gambling?”
Since the gamblers do it, they’re getting some benetits from it (other than the prizes themselves). Making gambling illegal says that you know better what people should do with their own money, hence they should do as you think.
Incidentally, I can think of one way a lottery can yield positive money returns. Consider the case of picking numbers from a lot (5 out of 40, for instance, or 1/650,000 per draw). The price won’t be won on every draw and the prize money is added to the next prize. After a few unsuccessful attempts, a situation can arise where buying a lottery ticked is actually profitable from a statistical standpoint, provided that not too many people participate and ruin the odds. Not sure if it happens in practice, though.
GregAllen said,
“Are schools, are communities… is ANYONE better off because of the massive proliferation of legalized gambling?”
Not really. In our county schools were getting say $15 million from the county budget before the lottery was established. Now they get say $5 million from the lottery and only $10 from the county. The schools have not won. Teaching positions are being lost. But the crooks, I mean politicians are taking the money and blowing is elsewhere (like receiving the Education Governors Award and then your wife blows $109000 of tax payers money to go overseas to museums).
I’m know I’m old fashioned about this — but I think it was better when society had “vices.”
You know — the gray area between criminality and virtue.
Vices were grudgingly accepted but discouraged. I think it was much better when you had to go to Los Vegas to gamble.
I know, “lotteries are a tax on the stupid” and it’s all voluntary but it hurts all of us to have the poor be even poorer.
And is gambling addiction really voluntary?
It’s been shown that easy availability of gambling leads to higher rates of addiction.
http://tinyurl.com/5ccfe8
Clearly, I think state sponsored gampling is loser for everybody.
Crystal Air has a great spin on this story:
Gambling Addicts Flock To Buy No-Chance Lottery Tickets
http://www.crystalair.com/content.php?id=59200807004
I just purchased 8 $20.00 tickets in a row and all are losers why they say 1 in every 3 tickets are winners that bull and I have $160.00 of lottery tickets to prove it