Let's say the odds 'sound better'. The lotery being the "bookie" in this case, these raffles are a bookie's "wet dream".
This is the way Illinois' raffle worked:
$10 ticket, 500,000 tickets had to be sold, which they were.
A total of 509 prized paid out. I think it was 4 for $1,000,000, 5 for $100,000 and 500 for $1,000.
Take a good look:
500,000 entries
- 509 winners
_________________
= 499, 491 losers.
So with two fields, one of 509, and the other being 499, 491, which one do you think you'd land in?
500,000 X $20 = $10,000,000, half of it paid out in prizes and the other half a guranteed $5,000,000 for the state.
I bought one ticket and mine was in the 28000 series. (Illinois had a zero in front so it was 0280000 something).
Not one ticket in the 28000 series won anything.
While the lower odds sound attractive compared to a jackpot game, the $20 "buy-in" as compared to a $1 buy-in is quite a bit steeper.
In poker there's a thing called "pot odds" which is a comparison of the odds against drawing the cards you need to make a hand to the odds determined by how much is in the pot and how much of that you have put in the pot. This is kind of a lotto version of the same thing, on a much grander scale.
As far as raffle "quick picks", I think if you were to buy more than one raffle ticket you would find out they are issued in sequence. I'm not absolutely positive about that, but i know that when we had the raffle the serial number of the tickets were determined largely by the date they had been drawn.
The earlier tickets had lower numbers than tickets purchased afterwards, so they had to have been issued in sequence.
PS
Just my $.02, but comsidering the example above of 509 winners as oppossed to 499,491 losers I'd like to see a law passed that any state lottery conducting a raffle has to pay out 80% of the take in prizes, not 50%.
Either that or a "booby prize raffle" that would go something like this - it's half price of whatever the raffle is going for. You pick up a playslip and SASE envelope form the lottery commission with a form that says:
Dear (fill in the state _ _ _ _ _) lottery. Enclosed is my $_ _ for the booby prize raffle. I can't stand having this $_ _ and just want to send it to the lottery without the formality of getting a ticket I have to check the number on when the winners are listed.
Sincerely,
Shlomo Schmuck