The back of a lottery ticket lists a ticket's odds of winning and losing. I want to test these myself in the real world.

The experiment:

I don't play the lottery on a regular basis, only for special occasions like a birthday.

I will spend $20.00 on lottery tickets today.

Whatever I win up to $20.00 I will turn around and spend on new tickets. This keeps my loss up to only $20.00. Anything I win over this I will send into pay down our credit card.

I will only buy more tickets once a week.

I will buy tickets from first place I come to that sells them as I run my weekly errands.

I'll record what happens on this site. I hope it's more than a one week experiment!

I was just reminiscing with my oldest daughter. She turns 22 on Monday. Shortly after she turned 21 (a year ago of course) she and I did a crazy thing and went up to a gambling town about an 2 hours away and played the slots. I was pregnant with the little cutie in my arms right now. I mention this because if you take a baby into a gambling place they will ask you not to touch the machines, I know this because my husband and I went to one for lunch many years ago. Gambling houses have great cheap dinners, but when I just touched a machine while holding my then 1 month old, they immediately asked me not to. Anyway, my daughter and I went walking around trying to figure out how those machines work. You put money into the machines and push buttons, and sit there for a while and when your money is gone you leave. That's what I figure. Of course I won like $20, then lost like $25 but I was only betting nickles, and of course some machines don't actually give you money money, they give you a red glowing tally of what you won and automatically bet this for you if you push the button again. If you actually want to walk away with your winnings, they print a thing out for you and you can take that paper and insert it into another machine or into the change giving machine thingy.

It was weird because it was so regulated, unlike anywhere I've ever seen. I touched a roll of nickles that the lady behind the counter was giving to us, and she asked me to leave them in the box until she was done counting them out. I hadn't noticed the box. She was very cheerful and said it was more to keep tabs on her than on me and pointed to a camera above the box. There were guys walking around everywhere, and then my favorite thing happened.

My daughter had been id'd a couple of times, which was fun for her, yep, I'm 21. You remember what that was like, official adulthood. Then one turned to me after id'ing her. He asked for mine! I laughed. I said, really? Are you serious? He got a look like, caught one and got very somber and looked like he was ready to call backup to throw me out. I got out my id. He looked at it, looked at me, looked at my id again with such a look of shock on his face, and said, well you don't look it, and stamped my hand. My id says 1969 on it. It looks more impressive than it is, I was born in the 60's yes, but only right before the moon landing. I guess my pregnant belly added to my appearance of being much younger than I usually get.

Back to the gambling. After a while of going from casino to casino we thought we'd had enough. We sort of figured out the machines, but it sort of seemed pointless. I started noticing the other people there. They didn't look happy. The looked miserable. We had been looking at some machines going off what looked somwhat familiar, like pirates, or mermaids or monopoly(ok, this sounds weird if you haven't been there, these were themes on the machines) and there was a woman sitting at penny machines. She had a card on a chain that was attached at her waist and stuck into a slot on the machine. She was there pushing the button over and over like once every 3 seconds and staring at the screen. Her expression was something I can't describe. Like twisted hope. We had gone all around and come back again, and still she was there. I was wondering how much she was earning, and I realized that if she spent the same amount of time working at McDonald's she would probably have earned the same amount, and she would have been with people. I felt sorry for her. Even if she won a million dollars eventually, what had she done to earn it? Sit at a machine, imprisoned for days and days pushing a button? living on miserable hope, risking relationships and the mortgage? I would rather be poor.

I will probably invite my other children to go gambling when they hit 21 just so they can see for themselves that it isn't a good life, and hopefully it will keep them from a gambling addiction. Sure some people hit is big, but they risk much more than money, and by the time they earn a million their minds have been altered by what they had to do to earn it and very often they just loose it all again. I think the real odds are the ones that both earn the money and manage to keep their lives intact. The system really isn't set up for someone to walk in and win a big amount right off the bat, though that is the hook. It's much more set up to keep prisioners taking their hard earned money. and even future earning with credit, one penny at a time. People will do a lot for hope, hope is a good thing. But this is not good hope. This is the kind of hope that kills, if not the body, then the soul.

My daughter and I left, and on the long drive home we talked about our observations. We felt as though we'd been lied to, or tricked or cheated somehow. Like we'd thought we'd been promised money if we just risked a little, but we hadn't been promised money really, we'd only been promised a slim chance. What is a slim chance worth? And that slim chance never gets any bigger no matter how long I stay there, no matter how much I spend. It's not something I can put in my pocket, and it's not something I can sell or give to someone else. So, I go on with my theory that gambling is only the very profitable buying and selling of a slim chance, and not really the promise of easy street.

If I had a bank account where I deposited $100 and $55 back, I would take my money out immediately.

I had kept trying to think of what it is I'm trying to do. I realize that lottery tickets say your chances of winning are high. But what you don't realize is that each ticket has that same odds. Say, if my odds are 1 in 200 that I will win a prize, if I buy 200 tickets (at $200) this doesn't increase my odds of winning. Each ticket has a 1 in 200 chance of winning! It's like saying since I have a 50/50 chance of conceiving a boy or a girl, and I had a son last time my chances of conceiving a girl are now 100%. Each chance is the same 50/50 which bears out in my life since my husand and I conceived a son followed by 6 daughters.

I bought 20 $1 tickets. My thought is that I could increase my chances of winning more than $20 I could upgrade to more expsensive tickets, and build my $20 up from there. I got 4 sets of 5 tickets. The first set I had to add each column to find out if I won. Each ticket had three columns to add. This was annoying. The second set also had 3 chances on each ticket, but this was just win/lose. The next set was like lotto. I had to scratch and scratch. I had to scratch the 5 numbers at the top to match, then 4 rows of numbers to scratch, each with 5 numbers in the row. I hate that game, I had to scratch and watch closely to see if I won. The last one I had to scratch amounts of money, and if 2 or more amounts matched I won the prize.

I only won $11. So I have to decide if I will buy $1 tickets again, hoping to build, or buy 1 $1 ticket and 2 chances for $5 each or 1 $10 ticket.

I noted my emotions while I was scratching the tickets. I wasn't real intersted, so I didn't scratch them right away. They sat on my nightstand for 2 days. I started thinking I had just wasted my money, then I didn't want to scratch them at all. Then I thought, I'd just get it over with. Then I felt some anticipation thinking, what if? So I scratched the first one and won, $3. I felt good. I felt like, maybe I was having good luck. As I continued I felt mild excitement, annoyance, hopefulness, like I had been cheated, irritation, hopefulness again, frustration as 2 sets won absoultely nothing, and glad at last that I hadn't lost every penny, but not real eager to try it again.

I'll buy $11 worth of tickets in a couple of days.

 Not having done this very often, I didn't realize you need actual money to buy ticket. I forgot to take my tickets with me on my errands. I had thought I would just buy $11 worth of tickets, then cash in the other tickets and keep the $11. But I didn't have any cash with me. I had thought of going to an ATM, but my bank's wasn't around, and I would have to pay $2.50 to be able to spend my $11! I'm pretty sure that after I lose my $20 doing this I won't do it again. There are too many emotions around it. If I had taken my $20 and put into savings, or sent it to pay down our credit card I would have felt good. But this is a rough roller coaster! And I had an extremely full day of errands yesterday, I gave some of my sparce brain activity to this! It's seeming more and more silly to me.

Okay. So I took my $11 worth of winning tickets and cashed them in for new tickets. I decided to get 3 $2 tickets, and 5 $1 tickets. I got into the car and immediately started scratching. I didn't want to wait, I just wanted to get it over with. I won a dollar on the first ticket. Intstead of getting a little excited this time, I got annoyed. Yep, just trying to get me to believe that I'll be a big winner. Then I handed the rest of them over to my kids to scratch, I wanted it done without the roller coaster of emotions, and the kids like to scratch them when we get them for holidays or birthdays. The tickets were the kind that you have to scratch over and over to find out if you've won. My kids got annoyed. My son said it's like holding a doll up to offer to a baby, then saying, nope, you don't get it, and taking it away again. I said, like teasing? he said, exactly. I won $5 total. Statistically speaking, my experiment will probably only last another week. Then my $20 will be gone, spent on a bunch of teases.

I realized that for everyone that wins a million dollars, like 2 million dollars were lost by someone else (probably quite a few by the winner, who was probably playing for years before they won), since I think half goes towards winnings, half towards our state parks, (maybe, I have to look into it) probably like me, a dollar at a time. Who thought this up? Who plays this?  Them stupid tickets were losers from the start, and they revealed their looser-ness to me one scratch at a time, while teasing me with every stinking scratch!

There is a website listed on the back of the cards I am going to look at. Stay tuned.

 The Reader's Digest did an article on lotteries in their February 2009 issue. It had some surprising information in it. The first government run lottery was done by Queen Elizabeth in the 1560's. The biggest jackpot ever won was 315 MILLION! That is a crazy amount of money. The worst part is that 5% of lottery players buy 54% of the tickets! And 6 states have video lottery machines that are loke casino slot machines, and critics call them "video crack."

The article has a little good news for me, though, it says statistically speaking if I continue to play and win a dollar here and a dollar there, every few weeks I should win $100. That sounds okay, especially if I just keep playing my same origianal $20.00. If I only every buy tickets with the winnings, I will gain and not just win back some of the money I spend. Of course this only works if I win at least a little every time. And the other thing is that it's hard to remember to bring the tickets with me, and to purchase new ones. Most of the places I shop don't sell them, so I have to go out of my way.

So far my tiny luck continues. I got the new tickets, and started scratching right away. I wanted to get the losing over with, I had decided I would just lose so I didn't ride that rollercoaster again.  I won $10 on the second ticket. I stopped scratching there. So I'm still in suspense, but not in any hurry. There must be something wrong with me, though, all I'm glad about is that I haven't lost all my money yet. All in all, I still prefer the feeling of earning my money with hard honest work rather than winning it. Scratching silver stuuf off of a card isn't work. And the money comes directly from people who needed it but gave it away hoping for better days. And that bugs me some. But, I don't hate it so much now that I understand the emotional manipulation that gambling involves. It's an honest tease to get my money, and I agree to accept those terms.

I only ended up winning that $10. So I took that and got 5 $2 tickets. They were bingo tickets, and I won $20 on the second ticket. I enjoyed these tickets, I like playing bingo even if there isn't any money involved. But I kept wondering if I would have enjoyed playing it if I hadn't won right off the bat. Probably not as much. But it was much better than the lotto scratch cards, and the add these number to get to 4 or 7, or a multiple of 9.

I traded the $20 ticket for 6 $3 tickets and one $2 one. The $2 one lost. And it was an annoying game. I am seeing that a group of tickets has somewhat better odds than a single ticket. Maybe if I bought a single ticket more than once a week I would have a better chance.

The ones I have are crossword puzzles. I only had time to do one of them. They are truly time consuming. Nothing yet. So annoying, one of the words is 'rich'. Here goes the roller coaster.

Good luck. Is it real? If it is, how does someone get it?

I love the show "Red Dwarf". It's a sci fi BBC show from years ago. On one episode they land on a ship that has experimental viruses on it. One is for the common cold, etc. One is a good luck virus, and if infected with it you have incredibly good luck for a period of time until you are 'cured'. So they are getting away from bad guys, and they infect one of the crew with the virus, and they say, if we only had a (fill in the blank) we could get away. And the guy with the virus reaches down and picks something up and says, like this? And it's what they need. They need a complicated code, and he gets it on the first try. They say it explains why some people have runs of good luck. They are infected with a good luck virus.

This is silly of course. But is there some force in the universe that governs good luck? Does this force look at me and say, well, she's got a 4 leaf clover, I will bless her with good luck. I see she has her lucky rabbit foot, bonus for her. This is silly, too. But we are people of faith, and whatever we believe about God, we still believe that some kind of force governs our lives. In reality it's just statistics. I am not destined to win $20,000. But I am also NOT destined to win $20,000. It's just a bunch of tickets printed off, winners and non winners, side by side, hidden from plain view. Someone will get the winners. Someone will get the losers. It's completely randon. There is not some kind of good luck god whispering in my ear to go to that store at that time and buy this kind of ticket right after that customer, and if there was, why is he whispering into my ear? And why would he work for me? Or does he really work for the guy behind me and he wants me to pick the losers so he can get the winners to the customer behind me?

This is why I haven't played Lotto. Way too random. The tickets I am scratching off are already destined winners or losers. It's not a bunch of random balls that can come up with hundreds of winners, or no winners. I understand that if I play the same numbers I have better chances that sometime my numbers will come up. But don't we use that expression for death? I also don't want to win that much money. I don't really want a million dollars. What a pain that would be, managing all that money. It would get in the way of the things I really value, like relationships with my children. The best times I've had with them involved no money at all. I have faith in God. I believe He is on my side with or without a four leaf clover. I believe He gives me exactly what I need. I trust Him. He has given me all that I need, and if it's less than what I think I need, then I'd better adjust my life 'cause God isn't wrong.

So, I continue on with the experiment. It's just an experiment, to see if the lottery is a viable investment like all the commercials tell me. I do not have faith in it to rescue me from the mundane task of managing my money carefully, or to give me every material item I could ever want. No, not at all. So far it's not an investment at all. It's just a painful, long drawn out donation to someone else who is hoping to win. At this point I'd rather just hand my $20 to someone about to buy a ticket and say buy milk. But they'd probably just use it to buy tickets.

My husband played a slot machine years ago. He was a half and inch away from winning a huge amount of money. He still talks about it. My kids said the same thing after they missed winning on a scratch card by one letter or number. I told them there is not such thing as almost winning. It wasn't like in baseball where you missed the ball because you hesitated, or in football if you missed a pass because you didn't run fast enough. The scratch cards were never winners! The method they chose to reveal their loser-ness to you was by giving you numbers that were close to the winners. They could have just have easily given you numbers that were far away from the winners. Before it had its silver stuff on it it was a loser. A loser is a loser is a loser. If we win, we don't say, whew! I almost lost on that card. If I had gotten an 8 instead of a 7 I would have lost. There is no almost winning or almost losing. The cards were printed, set in stone, regulated to the point of craziness, and by random chance I will buy one or the other. Mostly the other.

Okay. I bought new tickets. I put it off for a couple of weeks because I was sick of losing! I won $6.00. I felt the end of my experiment was coming to and end, and I was right. I bought $6.00 worth of tickets, 3 $2.00 ones. No winner. That's it.

I kept thinking for a while about how I could have been successful with this experiment. I could have spent $50.00 instead of just $20.00. I could have bought more expensive tickets. I toyed with the idea of doing the experiment over again. Then I realized I am listening to the seductive voice of the lottery itself. This is the voice that people hear right before they get in deeper. The voice that says, "come on, you can solve this puzzle. You can figure out how to get my money, and live happiliy every after. Come on and try!" It is a powerful voice. And easier to listen to the more debt one has, and the less income one has, the more greed one has, etc.

But I have kept my pile of losers. They were always losers. They lied to me each time. Some lied slowly, some lied quickly. I don't want to do it anymore. I want to be in charge of my own money. I don't want to give it away and hope that some of it comes back to me, maybe, if I happen to be in the exact right place at the exact right time. At 300 to 1 odds for EACH ticket. My $20 was spent on a pile of paper lies. And the emotional rollercoaster they put me on was definately NOT worth $20.

I am going back to my favorite saying. "yes, I win every week at the lottery. I didn't play, and I 'won' my own money." An update of "a dollar saved is a dollar earned."

I saw the tickets for sale yesterday when I was shopping. Not only was I not tempted, I was repulsed. The same way I would be repulsed by worms being on sale. I hope whoever wins my $20 will be happy with it. I'm pretty sure they won't keep it for very long, probably put it right back into cirulation with other lottery losers.

I consider my experiment a very big success.