| Posted: July 8, 2007, 4:20 pm - IP Logged |
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Yeah it is pretty sad for game with such good so-called "odds" of winning, only to return a ZERO percent payback for the price of $20 a ticket. Even more sad that I usually receive more of a payback simply by playing one powerball, with so-called odds that are ridiculous.
The overall odds of winning (1 in 80) were the best I've seen in any state raffle game so far. But when you do the math that also means there will be 79 losing tickets for every winning ticket. Multiply 79 times 7777 and you'll see there were a whole bunch of people the odds didn't favor.
Comparing the PA Raffle to Powerball is apples to oranges unless Powerball sold $2 tickets, assigned each ticket with a different combination and sold out all 146,107,962 tickets with same payoff structure. You would have a 1 in 37 chance of winning a prize. Since the PA Raffle sold $20 tickets and the lowest winning prize was $100, you would have to compare buying 10 of these mythical Powerball tickets to the odds of winning $100 and that would be 1 in 1193 compared to the 1 in 80 the PA Raffle offered.
When PA announced they were having that raffle they said upfront they were selling 625,000 $20 tickets and would have 7777 winners. Did you really expect them to say there would be 617,223 losing tickets?
