Whether you’re playing in person or online, the lottery is one of the most popular gambling activities in the United States. People spent upward of $100 billion on tickets last year alone. The games are a fixture of American life, and they’re largely advertised as a painless way to raise money for schools and other public projects. But if you dig deeper, the message starts to unravel.
State-sponsored lotteries are primarily about attracting a base of regular players. And they’re doing that by promoting the idea that even if you lose, you should feel good about yourself because you’re contributing to your community. But that argument fails to put the amount of money state-sponsored lotteries bring in into context of overall state revenue, and it doesn’t take into account the fact that most lottery play is done by people who have a lot of money to burn.
Mathematicians are constantly coming up with new ways to beat the odds and make a fortune on the lottery, and they do it by bulk-buying the tickets in large quantities. This allows them to see patterns that most other people don’t, and it also gives them access to the information they need to find a winning combination.
One couple in Michigan made more than $27 million over nine years on a game called the Mega Millions by doing just that. This article from the Huffington Post recounts their strategy, which involved finding repeating numbers in “random” drawings. It’s a simple strategy, but it can be effective, especially for smaller lotteries where there are fewer possible combinations to choose from.