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Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second

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I think people understand the odds are small. However, perhaps they perceive their chances of meaningfully turn around their life in other ways have even smaller odds. i.e. improbable vs actually impossible. At least the lottery doesn't care about your current circumstance and everyone has an equal (equally small) chance.

Secondly, because everyone realizes the chances are small, the real product being sold is Hope. Even the advertisements for the lotteries address this. The thing you're buying is 30 seconds of daydreaming so you can comfortably tackle the rest of the day.

1 month agoby lunaru

I would be really curious to see the money side of this. I am not sure about Powerball, but with EuroJackpot, some of the smaller wins can cover the cost of the ticket (or even cover a holiday!).

It would be really interesting to watch the expected value play out over repeated plays!! I am imagining a running balance where you keep track of total spend versus total returns. Most of the time the balance steadily goes more negative, with occasional jumps back up when you hit a partial match, and very rare big spikes from a larger win.

Very cool project!

1 month agoby atroposDad

I think it would be interesting to have a version where the chosen numbers were the same every time. We all know the odds won't change but there are countless people who play the lottery this way. They have "their" numbers and they never deviate for fear that if they do, that's when "their" numbers would pop up and they'd miss out on the win.

1 month agoby noman-land

What people often overlook about lottos is that for a few dollars, you’re buying the chance to dream about a better life.

And that dream lasts right up until you check the numbers.

That’s the part rational investors tend to miss … the power of dreaming.

And I’ll admit it - I play the lottery too, even though I already live a pretty comfortable life.

1 month agoby tiffanyh

What I love about this is how it demonstrates that the waiting is the most powerful part. That week is where a lotto user’s brain does all the work for the lotto corp. The anticipation! The excitement. What if? Oh let’s daydream! Oh the dopamine!

You don’t even have to sell them hope. Just sell them the sensation of hope.

1 month agoby Waterluvian

A few reasons I still play despite understanding the odds. The euro millions also distributes money to charitable organisations, so I see my play as a donation, and that I’m purchasing a day dream.

People still win the jackpot, frequently. Some of those people probably understood the odds too, and it just happened to them, that feeling must be pretty wild.

1 month agoby PUSH_AX

A few years ago I wrote a script to compare my numbers against all previous drawings. Still didn’t “win”!

1 month agoby cmckn

What would be cool is being able to enter a ticket price, and keep a running count of financials to show how underwater you are on a net basis.

Could also change the cadence for tallying purposes (so 1 second = 1 week/fortnight/month) to keep track of how many weeks, months or years one has been doing this for. But that might get depressing!

1 month agoby pcchristie

This reminds me of a (dirt cheap - about 0.5€) scratch ticket available when I was growing up. The number of winning tickets, as specified on the ticket, was 51%. The 2% up from the usual 49% meant you won more than you lost. The smallest prize was about twice the cost of the ticket. We would run to the store on our lunch break, buy a couple of tickets, rinse and repeat a few times, and have money for whatever food we wanted for the day.

(and no, you wouldn't be able to farm them - the store only carried X amount of tickets, and they usually sold out quickly)

1 month agoby my_throwaway23

I think for most people, they just think _someone_ will win eventually and you can't win if you don't play, so why not part with some (hopefully) disposable income that could turn their entire life around.

1 month agoby thrownato

Neat. I like that multiple clients get the same websocket data, as opposed to each just running their own simulation. I will be watching https://lotteryeverysecond.lffl.me/wins with interest. ;)

1 month agoby cloudfudge

> You are more likely to...get dealt a royal flush in poker on your first hand (1 in 649,740)

This is true but a bit misleading: 99% of people actually playing poker in the US today are playing Texas Hold'em or other variants where "your first hand" contains more than 5 cards and is vastly more likely to have a royal flush. I've had several royal flushes but would not want to think I'm only an order of magnitude or two away from having the luck of a Powerball winner.

1 month agoby dmurray

A useful statistic to include is the probability of becoming a successful business owner, or better yet, the probability of getting a job that pays an annual salary of 200k, 1mil. etc. Maybe that will inspire people to dream more practically.

Another insightful feature would be to emulate playing at the rate of real life (approx. tickets per second in real life).

1 month agoby alfabeta

So you're telling me there's a chance

1 month agoby recallingmemory

For me a good way to visualize it is, you get given a key. It works on exactly one of the houses in your entire country, and you get one try (no you cant inspect the lock first and all keys look the same). Good luck trying!

1 month agoby Scarblac

Two large lotteries in my area: Lotto Max: 1:33,294,800 Lotto 649 1:14,000,000

(excluding the smaller pool draws of 5/6, 4/6, etc)

One ticket as the width of a human hair (60-80 µm).

The winning numbers are a hole the width of a human hair.

The odds of winning 1:14m is hitting another hair head on in a line 14,000,000×0.00007 m=980 meters wide. (~840 meters to ~1,120 meters)

The odds of winning 1:33.3m is hitting another hair head on in a line 33,294,800×0.00007 m=2,330.636 meters wide. (1,998 meters to ~2,664 meters)