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A comment on Lottery-Like Prizes Coax Savings. What’s the Risk in Expanding Them?. Parent comment

Re:Lottery-Like Prizes Coax Savings. What’s the Risk in Expa... by eadmund on Friday December 21, 2018 @06:22PM (#18737622)
> In the US, before state run lotteries were present and popular, there were criminal run "numbers games" which were quite similar to lotteries but with much worse payout ratios and where the criminals that ran them often refused to pay for various reasons.

Do you have a source for that? My recollection from my own reading years ago is that the criminal numbers games tended to pay better odds than modern state-run lotteries.

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Re:Lottery-Like Prizes Coax Savings. What’s the Risk in Expa... by dragonwriter on Friday December 21, 2018 @06:40PM (#18737730)
Wikipedia claims 600:1 payout on 999:1 odds was typical. That's about a 60% payout; a published analysis [0] indicates that California lottery games range between under 50% (most games) to nearly 80% (the latter for high-denomination Scratchers.)

So, in general, worse than numbers games, though better if you choose the right game.

[0] https://wizardofodds.com/games/lottery/california-lottery/

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