I see people joining lotto pools. I'll leave aside my thoughts on playing lotto in general and the fact that people only get interested when we cross the marketing-scam number of $1B. I assume the pool means as many tickets as people are purchased and if any ticket wins, everyone splits (please correct me if I'm wrong). How does this work from a tax perspective? Can multiple people actually claim it? My assumption is not, so one person legally gets the money and pays the taxes. Is the agreement for the after-tax value? My impression is that these pools are heimish, and all is good when they're not winning, but if a pool wins, and there's 10s of millions of dollars on the line, out come the lawyers and a massive legal battle. Unless people have solidly written contracts for these pools? All academic. I know the odds. But I'm curious if anyone knows the answers

There used to be a guy online called the lottery lawyer that had a good blog post about, something involving trusts and taxes, but I can’t find it now

Thank you! Hopefully all these yidden lose so this doesn't happen... Good chance my tefillos will be answered 😄

I don’t understand your general opposition to lottery tickets. You increase your odds of winning the lottery infinitely when you go from having zero tickets to buying just one ticket. How can you dismiss an infinite increase in the likelihood of winning $1B that comes from purchasing a single ticket, when the cost is an incomprehensibly small fraction of the potential winnings, which you just achieved an infinite percentage increase in your odds of winning?

Hadn't even thought of this issue

@great-appointment-99249 that's why I get really angry when someone buys more than one ticket. The second ticket is no longer an infinite increase.

that's also why it makes no sense to drive a car even once, you increase your odds of an accident by infinity

Yeah, but look at the costs... I see a lottery ticket as $2 for a 1-2 days VR ride. It can be fun and sometimes even lead to interesting insights about the value of money. Not advocating, just a thought.

i have actually been convinced about buying lottery tickets from Morgan Housel, i’ve realized they are purchasing very rationally the ability to dream about a future they could otherwise not imagine, and I am simply unable to understand it because I have the capacity to reach that future without the need to dream.

I loved that point in his book, partly because it aligned with my idea of the VR ticket.

I can't even dream. Probability is too strongly ingrained in me.

Finish your thoughts... Wouldn't you stop? Even for the fun of it?

Calculations available upon request

🙋 Request

cool. 🙌

I have contributed to kenslottopool.com we've gotten our odds to lower than 1 in 12k. Thats still not amazing odds but better odds than the Oorah Chinese auction.

Signed a contract?

From their FAQ:

The largest prize we’ve ever won was a $500 ticket, and that happened once

If someone came to me and said he'd give me $1B, all legit, I'm honestly not sure I'd accept. I'd have to think very hard about it. When I come up to shamayim, they're going to have taynos against me for how I used my money. But those taynos will be limited. They're not going to ask why I didn't build a yeshiva or start some necessary organization. But with that kind of money... The taynos they can have on me is truly scary

But only if you won't start a yeshiva...

Or if you don't donate to frum.finance

I'm sure these pool joiners realize that the potential winnings get reduced inversely proportional with the increased chance. Right? So if you increased the chance from 1 in 300M to 1 in 12K, that means you're splitting the potential winnings with 25K people. So the recent 1.8B drawing, which was really 800M lump sum, comes out to 32K per person...

Yes. There's a spreadsheet that gets circulated before every drawing with every person's share of the pool and pictures of all the tickets