Interesting day today. Plese forgive the length of this post.
Back in Westminster to another smokefilled Vietnamese cafe/coffee shop. If they have scratchers, they'll probably be found in a vending machine, and that's what I wanted to play today. Kinda went off the deep end. Initially bought 11 5MJP tickets, went home as I usually do, and scratched them off.
Sucked. Only 3 (20, ticket, and 50) winners out of 11 tickets. Entered the losers on second chance and was looking at the numbers and noticed I had bought 028-018. As the deck was going from high to low from the vending machine, that meant besides the 11 I just bought, only one other ticket had been purchased. I started thinking about the odds of the big ticket in the deck being somewhere in the next 10 tickets as opposed to it being in #029. I also knew with the avg payback in this game being approx 78%, and with my payback so far at 41%, I was way below that average, although as decks with big winners have payouts above 100%, payouts below the average wouldn't be unusual. The question was, how far below the average would be unusual.
I went back, thinking I still might lose (and then feeling real lousy for the day, particularly for chasing a winner, which is something I try to avoid), but the avg return on my next purchase stood to be better and the big ticket was most likely still in there. So I returned to purchase another 10, and scratched them off in my car, something I almost never do. This time 4 winners out of 10 (20, ticket, 20, and 25). I had invested $420 & won $175 for a loss of $245, but there was still no big ticket, unless it was #029, and I did have the thought that if someone had bought that one for a big win, they might have bought the next one at some point. So I went back in and finished the deck, purchasing the remaining 8 tickets. This time 3 out of 8 were winners, but the big ticket was in there at #005 in a clump of 3 winners(500, 20, 20), and it was for $500.
So for my total investment of $580 I got back $715. Not sure what to exactly think of it yet. Maybe when there's a big winner, the rest of the deck might look lousy? Maybe if you get a big clump of winners in a deck, quit? All I'm sure of is the experience left me feeling jittery for all the early losing, and when it was over I felt I needed either a cape cod or an oatmeal cookie and a glass of cold milk to settle down. Went with the cookie and milk.
Since I almost purchased an entire deck, if anyone would like to see the complete sequence of winners and losers, let me know, and I'll post that.
GLTA