This guest post about lottery myths was written by Miss Moneypenniless over at Totally Money, the new home of the Totally Money Carnival.
Before my new life as a personal finance blogger, I used to work for a large lottery operator. Cue mutterings and shakings of heads. Please bear with me. While the two roles appear to be polar opposites, the former kick-started the latter. There’s nothing like watching a single mother buy $50 worth of scratchcards in the middle of winter while her emaciated child walks around with no shoes on to make you want to help people make better financial decisions. While there are heaps of lottery players who do play responsibly, there are other players who see that lottery play slip and immediately suspend all reason and logic, parting with huge sums on the craziest fanciful notions. During my time at the lottery operator, I came across lottery myths that ranged from the whimsical to the just plain weird. Here are a few of my favourites…
1. There are ‘lucky’ numbers
Nebulous statistics drive some lottery players into a frantic frenzy. ‘The number 24 has come up for the past two weeks! It MUST be lucky!’
Ok. In the UK the lottery draw machinery and process are highly monitored, regulated and supervised by certified auditors. The machinery is tested to the fault and every ball is weighed ahead of every draw show by a university physics department. The balls have a limited shelf-life and are discarded after a handful of shows so the balls’ bounce isn’t impaired by overuse. Machinery malfunctions are frankly not possible and there is no chance that one ball will be selected over another due to its physical properties.
As independent statisticians have proven, lottery draws are statistically random. Yes certain numbers will crop up more than others but that is wholly attributable to the random process, which is entirely without design or predictability.
2. It will happen to me
One I have heard time and time again. ‘It’s only a matter of time’, ‘I know I WILL win one day’. Well statistically speaking no you won’t. The chance of winning the standard National Lottery game in the UK is 1 in 14 million. Let’s put this in another way. If you bought a ticket every week, you’d expect to win the UK lottery once in 250,000 years. Now compare this to multiple state lotteries in the USA and those hopelessly slim odds almost look favourable. In some multiple state lotteries the chance of winning the lottery is 1 in 120 million. According to one estimate based on data from the US National Safety Council, you’re 45 times more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to win a US multiple state lottery. And around 100 times more likely to date a supermodel.
3. There are ‘lucky’ stores
When I was working at the lottery there were 28,700 stores in the UK that sold lottery tickets. Now the UK is not a big place. Even in the depths of the most rural uninhabited no-man’s-land you’d struggle to be more than a mile from your nearest lottery terminal. And even if your nearest store is going to be tricky to get to, you can always buy your tickets online from the comfort of your own home.
And yet I knew a man who travelled to a store twenty five miles away three times a week to buy tickets from his ‘lucky’ store, despite the fact that the place of ticket purchase has absolutely no bearing on a statistically random draw. So here we had a guy who surplus to his weekly lottery ticket bill was also shelling out on gas for 150 redundant miles per week.
4. Buying your ticket seconds before the cut-off point will get your numbers to the ‘top of the pile’
Truly the most bizarre myth I encountered during my time at the lottery. I knew a couple who would spend every draw day evening sat in a supermarket car park. At 7.28pm on the dot, they’d dash into the store and purchase their lottery tickets speedily ahead of the 7.30pm deadline. Baffled by this bizarre ritual, I asked them why they did this. They felt that buying their tickets so close to the cut-off point would mean that their numbers were at the ‘top of the pile’ and were much more likely to be picked. At this point I felt that a rational explanation of statistical randomness would fall on spectacularly deaf ears.
Have you encountered any lottery myths? I’d love to hear from you!
Crystal’s Comments: As I have mentioned before, I do play the lotto once in a while and use a few bucks of my fun money to do it. Yep, I know the odds suck and I don’t have any weird luck beliefs, but sometimes I just have a bad day and decide to “buy a buck of hope”, lol. I also enjoy the tiny thrill of taking a gamble and daydreaming for a few days about being a multi-millionaire overnight.
The myths above made me laugh pretty hard since I have heard similar ones – but #4 takes the cake since you can watch the balls be drawn here in Texas like you do at a bingo hall…”top of the pile”…hahaha. Thanks for a great guest post Mrs. Moneypenniless!
Thanks so much for posting this up Crystal! Since I’ve left the lottery operator I must add I do play on a few occassions. Sometimes you do just ‘feel lucky’ and, hey, why not?! I guess the key is to keep playing casual, fun and not to forget about those terrible odds.
Thanks again!
And I’d agree #4 really does take the biscuit!
Can’t say that I ever really feel lucky but will admit to dropping a dollar or two when the pot gets to record numbers.
Those specific examples you gave are just so foreign to most of us that try to be logical in our thought processes. Too bad for those people who do such crazy things when it doesn’t improve their odds one bit. The odds which are beyond horrendous to begin with anyway!
Never heard of number four before! Maybe I’ll try buying a lotto ticket for the first time ever! Feelin’ lucky?
I know many people who have waited for their ‘ship to come in’ in the form of a big stack of money won from the lottery. It is almost depressing, because people get their hopes up during the drawing, only to feel cruddy when they lose, week after week after week…
I was a bar once where an acquaintance bought $40 worth of pull tabs and “won” $22
I told him that I’d make him a deal…instead of wasting his time, He could give me $40, and I’d give him $22 back.
We could play as many times as he wanted to.
He didn’t think it was as funny as I did.
@Squirrelers whilst the couple in #4 were a real extreme, what struck me as crazy was the fact that a lot of the other people I encountered appeared to be rational. The guy who travelled to his ‘lucky’ store was a reasonably successful business man. The ‘it will happen to me’ mentality is rife amongst some of my most intelligent, analytical and scientific friends. I think it is surprisingly easy to get swept up in some rather crazy, irrational notions.
@Everyday Tips absolutely. For a lot of people I think lottery playing stimulates an escapist fantasy, which comes crashing down when they fail to win. I know a guy who used to go on real estate websites ahead of every draw to pick out the house he’d buy with his winnings. The reality bump for him week on week was often very hard to bear.
@DebtChronicles love it! It’s so hard to make our friends see sense when it comes to gambling. It’s crazy (and worrying) how a bigger loss is outdone in the mind by a smaller ‘win’.
Great post. I never play the lottery, it’s such a sucker’s bet. I guess I can understand the occasional $1 just for the thrill but I’ve known people who dropped big money on the lottery thinking their ship would come in.
I once dreamed some numbers and thought they must be lucky. I never played them though so I can’t tell you if they were or not.
The biggest myth of all is when people think they’re Lucky. My dad was like that. He gambled his whole life and he always pointed out the money he won but never the money he lost.
I saw this show on the travel channel where this guy is convinced he has a system and actually wrote a book about it. Yes, lightning has struck him a few times, but obviously he is a statistical anomoly. I hate to think that people waste money on buying lottery strategy guides even more than just playing the lottery!
Everytime I’ve felt “lucky” … it seems that my luck ran out the day before.
We’ve went to play Bingo in the past. We went for a couple of months, once a week, and I actually won to games (back to back at that) for $1000. I like the odds of playing Bingo much better than the odds within the Texas Lottery.
I’m with Crystal tho’ … when it gets big (over $100 million), it’s fun to buy a few chances and dream of a much different life. Especially if it involves $100 million dollars.
Money spent: We’re way up on Bingo win’s vs. money spent. We’re way down on Lottery wins (a … zero? I’m lucky to get 3 of 6 numbers?)
Something the author said … seeing people spend their grocer money for the chance to win ….. week after week. We’d see that in Bingo Halls (too).
Good Post. Thanks.
Also … guess who’s idea it was for a few of us to go play Bingo. (wink)(ans: Ms. BFS)
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