I might be a sucker for raffle tickets but this new one from Virginia seems to have pretty good odds (for the top prize anyway). What do you think?

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Virginia’s New Year’s Millionaire Raffle

With the best chance ever of winning $1 million from the Virginia Lottery (1 in 110,000). This game will crown three NEW millionaires on January 1, 2010!

Sales begin November 1. Only 330,000 tickets will be sold.

On January 1, 2010, a drawing will be
held to randomly select the following winners:

3 winners of $1,000,000
6 winners of $25,000
300 winners of $500
 
Virginia’s New Year's Millionaire Raffle drawing will take place on January 1, 2010.

The Raffle’s 330,000 tickets will be sold in sequential order (from 330000 to 000001) until sold out.
One set of raffle numbers will appear on each ticket you buy. There are no playslips for Millionaire Raffle. You do not choose your raffle numbers. There will be only one raffle drawing.Each Virginia’s New Year's Millionaire Raffle ticket costs $20.
 
309 people will win cash prizes:

Three - $1,000,000 winners: 1 - 110,000

Six - $25,000 winners: 1 - 55,000

300 - $500 winners: 1 - 150,000
 
Winning Raffle Numbers will be selected by a computerized random number generator. The random number generator software has been certified using widely accepted statistical analysis formulas by an outside gaming device and systems testing laboratory.

Better than Illinois' 500,000 ticket affair, but it's still a bookie's dream.

330,000 tickets sold @ $20

309 winners

329,691 losers.

If these raffles were a $1 affair, same as a lottery ticket, they would be a good deal.

As a $20 affair, "the pot ain't right".

Good luck though, if you participate.

Well, somebody's got to win it.

^{_{Modern "education" teaches a version of history so fictionalized, it should be followed by "TM"}
They're warning me about Osama or whatever. Picture me buying the scam; I say "never!".}

Actually, there are 329,997 chances you won't be a millionaire. Overall, out of 330,000 tickets there will be a total of  309 winners, making the overall odds of not losing your $20 1 in 1078.4. Compare that to a $1 ticket with odds of 1 in 21,568 to win your money back.

Right now TN lotto plus is advertising a jackpot of $3.9 million. They don't seem to post it in an obvious spot, but I'll assume it's an annuity, and call the cash value $2 million, or twice as much as the raffle. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 7,059,052. Assuming the tickets are $1, spending the same $20 would give you odds of 1 in 352,952. That's only very slightly worse than the raffle odds, but the prize is twice as big. Get a friend to spend $20, too, and you're both almost twice as likely to win a million bucks. There's no 25k prize,  but $20 gives you a 1 in 1548 chance of winning $1000. That makes you about 35 times as likely to win 1/25th as much as the raffle's 2nd place prize.  You'd have a 1 in 33  chance of winning $50, compared to being 30 times less likely to win 10 times as much in the raffle. Overall, you've got slightly better than a 1 in 33 chance of not losing all your money, compared to 1 in 1078.

Can't hurt to take a shot at it. Good luck if you decide to give it a go!

Raffle tickets have been a popular item with players in the past. There have been some reported winners here at lottery post.

Had a Ga player with a Ga raffle win I think for one.

Do a raffle search at lottery post and you may find discussion on the topic.

You got my head spinning there Floyd (I have the math skills of a lug wrench).

Are you saying I would be better off putting $20 on Lotto Plus because it's only slightly less likely to win a million and a better chance to win a lesser prize, making it an overall better choice?

Coin Toss

Correct me here because I don't understand how they could run the raffle at $1 and still have comparable odds which is the attraction for this game. At $1 a ticket wouldn't they have to sell 20 times as many tickets to have the same prize allotment and thereby make the odds a lot worse?

Interesting.

300 winners getting $500.00 each = 150,000

6 winners getting $25,000 each     = 150,000

3 winners getting $1M each           = $3M

Virginia's profit = 3,300,000

rdgrnr,

True, but consider this. Let's compare a raffle and a card room operation. In poker rooms the players all put into the pot and the hopuse rakes 3% to 5% of the pot.

In Califronia card rooms, and others, along with raking the pot they sell seats at the game by the hour.

In a raffle, the rake is 50% of the total pot.

OUCH!

Now let's copmpare a jackpot game and a raffle. If we go back to the first ever drawing of every game, the lottery, the state, put up front money as the jackpot.

In a raffle, there is no front money whatsoever. In all formas of gambling the losers pay the winners and the house keeps the "vig" or the "per". But in a raffle this is taken to a ridiculous extreme, that's whjy I say it's a bookie's dream come true.

regrnr,

A little more. Let's take even the lowest jackpot game jackpot, in Illinois it starts at $2,000,000. So you bet a buck and the Lotto Fairy says "Today is your day" and you hit for a solo. Your dollar just won $2,000,000.

The Lotto Fairy decides it's somebody else's lucky day and they hit the raffle for $1,000,000.

The other person's $1 on Lotto won $2,000,000. That dollar became a "two million dollar dollar."

The raffle winner put up $20 to win $1,000,000. Each one of their dollars won $50,000.

Somehow, it just isn't the same bang for the buck. And as KY Floyd pointed out 3 players win $1 million and 329,9997 don't.

Raffles are just a super hype job. Just my opinion, and good luck to all who play them, but if I did I wouldn't be expecting a payout.

Coin Toss,

I understand what you're saying and it all makes sense. I understand the house take is outrageous. But discounting all the lesser prizes in this and other games, is there a game that will give me a better chance (odds wise) of winning a million dollars than this one with a twenty dollar bet?

With a minimum of a one million dollar prize as the sole objective which game anywhere would give me a better shot at it for $20? 

I'm not being critical of your opinion, just trying to understand if given my goal of winning a million and not being concerned about the lesser prizes, if there is a better game to put $20 on.

Thanks

rdgrnr,

As far as a million dollar chance for $20, probably not.

I'm convinced though that the first lottery raffle was a marketing experiemnt and half the people at the lottery commission (whichever state it was, I forget) saying, "Who is going to play this?" and the other half saying, "If you build it they will come" (or, "If you offer it they will play).

My biggest gripe with raffles is like I said before, the house is locking up $3.3 million of a $6.6 millions dollar take that they did not put one cent into.

Somewhere at the Virginia Lotery HQ's, unofficially of course:

3 winners of $1,000,000
6 winners of $25,000
300 winners of $500

330,00 tickets

309 winners

329,691 schmucks thinking they'll win something

Priceless.  

PS

As far as raffles go, a $25,000 secind place prize is pretty chintzy.

I realize I spaced out a bit while looking at the overall chances for the raffle.  Back to that in a second.

People often refer to odds as good or bad, but that's a bit like saying that fractions are good or bad. After all, odds and fractions are thesame thing, and they're mostly meaningless until they're related tosomething else. The ad claim of "best chance to win a million dollars" is true, but it's not the whole story. They can always "improve" the chance of winning a million dollars by increasing the cost of the ticket.  At the extreme, they could guarantee that every ticket wins a million dollars, but with tickets costing $2 million each, it would be too obvious that it's a very bad deal despite the "good" odds. Whether or not the odds are good always depends on the possible prize and the cost of the tickets.

Since a raffle tickets costs 20 times as much, the reasonable comparison to other games needs to be based on also spending $20 on those games. Usually that means 20 tickets instead of one. The overall odds for the raffle are 309 in 333,000, so I was right in saying that you've only got a 1 in 1078.4 chance of winning something. That's a 99.9% chance of losing your $20. Compare that to a typical $1 game where your chance of losing ranges from about 80% (scratchers) to 97 to 98%% (jackpot games). Of course your chances of winning a big prize are always much smaller than your chances of simply winning  back the cost of the ticket plus a few bucks extra.

Lotto plus is comparable to  plenty of other jackpot games at the state level, with odds of 1 in 7,059,052. I'm assuming that the jackpot is an annuity with a cash value of about 50%. Making it comparable to the raffle and buying 20 tickets gives you odds of 20 in 7,059,052 or 1 in 352.952.6. In my first post I screwed up with the 330,000 raffle tickets and compared as if there was only 1 top prize. Fixing that, the comparison is a 1 in 110,000 chance of winning the $1 million raffle prize against 1 in 353,000 to win about $2 million cash in lotto plus (I should also point put that there's always the chance of multiple winners, so the prize could be smaller, though 1 winner if the usual result). That means you're just over 3 times as likely to win half as much with the raffle. Of course the top prize in jackpot games changes, so the (roughly) $2 million cash prize can go up or down. If it rolls to the point where it's $4 million, it would definitely be abetter deal if you could convince 3 others to pool $20 each. That would give you a 1 in  88,000 chance of winning $1 million each,  assuming there were no other winners.

My comparisons of the other prizes was correct. The raffle gives you a 1 in 55,000 chance of winning $25k. 2nd place in Lotto plus is only $1000, but for $20 you're about 35 times as likely to win. 3rd prize in lotto plus is only 1/10th as much as the raffle, but you'd be 30 times more likely to win. You'd still be on the losing side, but you'd have  a 50% chance of winning $3. In the end, it comes down to personal preference. You're much more  likely to lose your money in the raffle than in lotto plus, but you've got a marginaly better chance of winning enough money to really affect your life.

Oh, about the gay poet.  How did you choose your avatar? It's Walt Whitman.

OK Floyd, understood, thanks.

Yeah, I'm just going for the million and not really thinking about the other prizes or concerned about the 20 bucks. Hell, you can't hardly get a full case of beer for 20 bucks anymore. I know the odds are that I'll get zip (again) but then again 3 people are going to get a million and all things being equal, I could be one of them.

Thanks again.

OK, Whitman, now I get it. I had been reading some of his stuff along with Emerson and Thoreau and others in the Transcendental Movement of the time at the time I was choosing the avatar. He also looks like a lot of the people in my neck of the woods (well, the women look a little better). And I figured my chances were good that nobody else would have the same one.

And when are you going to get an avatar instead of that box with the little red  x ?