Professional here..
j/k but serious here now, shyguitar...
You are ahead of the game by knowing what the chances are of winning a big one. The odds are awful. Just
like you said, with 4 - 6 top prizes in one game alone with a ticket printing amounting to 6 - 7 million tickets,
what are the odds? They are TERRIBLE.
Right place, right time for lower tiered prizes always happens for some. You have to be happy with $50, $100,
$500 or $1,000..but that's not happy money...with things like this, it's always bigger and better. The constant
reminders through advertising and easy access IVM's, scrolling updates on the screen at the terminal, constant
enticements printed on tickets about 5 TOP PRIZES OF A MILLION DOLLARS!!! and the convenience of being
able to purchase just about anywhere you go is sick actually.
Take a good, hard look at how long you've been playing, how much you win, if those wins justify what you
spent and what exactly the reason is that you play.
Everyone is looking for a grand prize but everyone can't win one, there are simply not enough to go around.
5 out of 6 million is nothing...that, realistically, isn't even worth playing for considering odds alone.
Getting lucky? Maybe...but trying to force a winner out of one machine when there are thousands in the state
isn't going to happen if it's 5 miles down the road. So much for right place right time.
Look at it this way...most people support the lottery and not the other way around. Put $20 in a machine and
what are you going to win? $5? $50? $0? There goes your $20 and how long until you play again? 5 minutes?
2 days? 1 week? Chances are you'll have the same outcome.
You have to put winning into perspective.
Winning and your definition of it matters. Are you happy with a FREE ticket? or happy with $10 with $20 spent?
Eventually if that's all you do or if all you do is lose, you're behind in the game and if you can't let that feeling go
because you're trying to catch up, all you're going to do is continue to try to catch up.
It doesn't sound like you're happy just playing. It sounds like you want to stop and to want to stop and wonder
how suggests you're not happy with what you are winning or are sick of losing.
You know the deal already, you said it yourself - you want to stop playing.
Try this..
when you walk up to a machine, stand there and look at it. Look at each bin. Look at what one ticket costs.
Restrain the impulse of doing what you walked up to do at the machine or counter. Keep your money in your
pocket and just look.
Try and imagine the winner out of all the selections there. The more you look, the more it'll seem ridiculous
to even try choosing one ticket out of what? 25? Some counter displays have 30 or more tickets going...
WHERE is the winner if you HAVE to win?? The more you resist the impulse of the situation, the better your
chances are of just walking away from it. In a split second your money can be sucked into the machine and
you can't get it back..what you get back are chances at winning something or most likely, nothing. There are
TONS of duds - some people shoot blanks every single time they play. There are too many variables in this
game.....someone could have come right before you and won $100...your next 50 purchases of that game
probably won't win more than $10 because of that $100. YOU are feeding up to the next winner for SOMEONE
ELSE if you get stuck on the notion: The winner HAS to be the NEXT one.
If you don't like playing for fun or it is NO fun...you are being manipulated, used and abused by your states
bottom line: to sell a product which sells itself through temptation - a chance to change your life.
They don't care WHO wins, WHO loses, WHO spends money, WHO doesn't have money to spend, WHO can't stop
spending, WHO stops spending, WHO is playing, WHO needs it....the players don't have a face, they only have
money...the state doesn't have a conscience, they only have a bottom line: making money on whoever they can.
The difference between you and some players is you want to stop playing.
That's a plus because you already know the reality of these games, you might not want to fully accept it thinking
you're going to get lucky SOME day..and you might. But if you feel worse more often than better about playing
it does make a lot of sense to cut way back or quit altogether.
Say there are currently 6 games out where you can win a million...and 4 - 6 top prizes in those games. There
are thousands of lottery retailers selling packs of tickets that present a chance to win one of those millions..36
chances tops on winning $1M...out of thousands of stores and millions of tickets. THAT alone is cut and clear...
chances are it WON'T be you or me or anyone we know. It's like a piece of sand in a sandbox.
I don't know how you play - if you're sick of playing because you always lose or spend too much but if you
want to stop, one key is to make stopping more desirable than playing. A lot of the impulse buying is - like
a drug - brought on by the way 'winning' makes you feel....there is a definite high and low...the high comes
when you win and the low comes when you lose. Is the high worth the low? That's why I asked if you're
happy winning a FREE ticket...and asked if you just play for fun.
You won't conquer the urge if you don't make a choice to play for fun or fully grasp the fact that winning anything
significant is a shot in the dark just about.
You'll have to change your mindset to one where you learn to hate feeding dollars over to a bad investment if
all you do is feel bad about spending money and losing money.
It'll take some work but soon you'll like the feeling of just walking right by those tickets..it's a split second decision
to put your money into the machine or ask for a ticket at the counter..it all happens so fast. Slow down next time
you pass a machine, think about where the winner is and if you're actually going to choose the winner and once
you control the impulse part of things, you'll be on the road to controlling it right out of your life if you want.