Well there goes my dream of an unholy alliance with a clerk. I just wanted to see if such a system existed, but it looks like no one is paying off clerks to help them win. I was hoping that there was some way to convince them NOT to sell me tickets that are no good, or get them to let me know when they TRULY believe that a ticket is good, not just trying to sell the last few in the pack, so that they can open another one. Lets just face it, when a person with any kind strategy knows that a larger than average ticket has been paid out of a roll, they aren't going to buy any more, so the tickets are going to sit. Most salespeople know this, so I think they tell people what they want to hear in order to convince them to buy the tickets. I guess there are not any clerks that steer their favorite customers toward a likely win, while trying to help them avoid as much loss as possible.
I have been trying to determine how to tell if a clerk is most likely lying, other than by their guilty look that some of them demonstrate when they are lying, and not real good at it. When you ask them if there have been any big winners on that roll, most of them will either say A) I don't know, because I just started working a few minutes/hours ago, or B) No, there haven't really been many winners, just free tickets and small payouts. Then they may go on to tell you that because it is the last ticket in the roll that it is lucky or if it is the next to last ticket they will try and convince you to buy both of them.
Some will be honest and tell you not to buy a certain ticket, because there was just a winner, but I think clerks like that are the exception, not the rule. I just don't know too many that will do that. I guess if I hear either of those answers I should not buy any from that roll, because most likely it is a lie. Maybe I actually need to spell out the dollar amount. For example, instead of "have there been any big winners?" I should ask, "Have you had any winners on this roll that have paid out at least $50?" After all, the term "big winner" is highly subjective. A big winner might mean $20 to one person, $100 to another, $500 to yet another, and to some, a big winner might only be a top prize or a jackpot.
It has been an extremely rare ticket salesperson who admits that they play. Most of them say that they don't play, at least 99% that I talk to deny it, and most of them tell me without any prompting. For some unforeseen reason, they feel that they need to blurt out the fact that they don't play. Perhaps this is a sure sign that they do. Are there any hard and fast rules for determining if a clerk or someone else employed there plays? Let me know if you have any methods of determining if clerks play or not, especially those who claim not to, but really do. How can you tell, other than buying a ticket, and then hiding in the bushes and watching them with binoculars? I really believe that you are fighting an uphill battle if the clerk plays. They are in a better position than you to know what the overall picture is.
