the lottery

[noncents]

My thoughts are a little hard to explain but I will do my best.

Obviously, if we were immortals, playing the lotto is -EV as there is a HUGE rake by the government/lottery officials. For most of my adult life, I`ve stayed away from the lotto figuring I`m better off playing poker with the $ because I am a (slightly) winning player. Recently it has occured to me that maybe playing the lotto isn`t necessarly as worthless as it may seem reasoning is as follows:

Where I live there are 3 draws per week and they each cost $2 so a year`s worth of lotto is $312 from previous experience and that of my relatives and friends I`d say you`ll probably win back around $30-$40 a year. (Someone else is welcome to do the math if they want) So say it costs $270 a year and lets say I play for 40 years (at a certain age I think winning would have less of a total life impact) for a total life cost of $10,800. Now this is a decent sum of money but most individuals are likely to waist this sum in their lives anyway: smoking, impulse buys whatever....

Now my question is this: Given we only live once (most people believe this anyway) and that we could spend less than 11k (not even couting winning 4/6 or 5/7 which usually pay a couple of hundred) for the chance of changing our lives completly, is the lotto 'worth' it, simply beacause in a lifetime you wouldn`t spend as much as you would potentially win?

Don`t get me wrong, I`m not advocating playing every draw for $40 or something. Just one ticket. Sorry if this post makes no sense, I tried to make my point as clear as possible and I appriciate all feedback so flame away.