rdgrnr..Can you beat Dec 4th 1940?..

I spend at least a dollar a day for pick5 and sometime play bigger games only when jackpot is huge and only then a few bucks.

i put money into it cos i needed  to generate funds for some charities i do and as such since my combos hit the east coast a lot mid and eve i call folks i know to play my selected combos i provide (not daily).initial starting funds was 2g a couple states.( p- 3 games.)

A tip o' the hat to ya tiggs. I always respect my elders.

I'm still an old geezer but I'll have to refer to you as the elder statesman from now on.

Let's win a big one now afore we kick the bucket!

rdgrnr..Thanks..I've been trying to hit big since 1962 gambling and 1988 on the lottery..I aiways say if I did hit big on the way home after cashing my ticket I'll probably nget run over by a bus..Let's do it now!!!

Any form of gambling can be very entertaining providing we put a realistic value on it. With the overall odds of winning something in PB and MM being around 1 out of 40, we can't realistically expect to get a return by playing $5 a drawing or $10 a week. However even knowing that our chances of hitting the jackpot are very small, we're paying a small price for a dream.

Last year when I was chasing Ohio's Rolling Cash 5 (with jackpots starting at $100,000), my average daily wager was $20 but I was also cashing tickets almost every day so my out of pocket expense was much lower. I did get lucky and hit a couple of 4 or 5s for $300 each and showed a small profit for the month and a half I played. The problem with any form of gambling is it's not very entertaining when we experience a losing streak so when my system went cold and I was only cashing for $2 or $3 on some days and nothing on others, it was no longer worth what I was spending.

When you're spending $20 a day playing a game with overall odds of 1:8.8 of winning something, if you're not winning two prizes a day then you would have to be doing something extremely wrong.  With the mostly likely prize being $1, you can expect to at least win back 10% of your money.

Maybe if I was playing 20 QPs a day, but I played a 14 number abbreviated wheel. I had a nice run consistently getting 2 or 3 numbers with an occasional 4. When the bottom fell out I was consistently matching 0 or 1 number with an occasional 2. With the exception of the number that had the most draws between its last hit or until it hit, the other 13 numbers varied every day.

As for winning a jackpot, I was only getting a 1% coverage so while not out of the question, I would have been extreme lucky. The idea was to take advantage of several 2 and 3 number matches with an occasional 4. I suppose I could have used all 39, filtered them down, but the coverage would have been much less with the 2 and 3 number matches. There are 25 combinations in a 2 if 5 of 39 number wheel and the only guarantee is one 2 number match.

"I've heard the naysayers say how stupid it is to play the lottery and how it's a tax on stupid people and all that."

For some people that's eaxctly how it is. Spending too much and thinking you've got a realistic chance of getting your money back doesn't make you one of the sharper tools in the shed. Compared to other vices people spend their money on, a few bucks for lottery tickets isn't stupid at all.

As you say, a few lottery tickets doesn't cost any more than a couple of beers at a bar, but I hardly spend any money in bars. I don't smoke, either. If I did, I could easily spend $1000 or more every year, and winning would mean never being among the 1 in 3 people killed by smoking. Compared to that, spending a few bucks on the lottery to have an extremly slim chance of winning a jackpot is sheer genius.

around $20 a week