You can lead a horse to water........

[shadroch]

I'm playing poker tonite at my local Catholic War vets with the Post commander when he tells us this story of incredible stupidity.

Little background first- THe CVA/KofC is a private club which is legally allowed to sell pulltabs, which are like an instant lottery.
You buy them from a state licensed dealer for around $50 a book, and they contain tickets worth $750 in each book, so the organization makes $200 on each full book sold. Usually, the club has five or six books to choose from. Top prize in any book is $500.
Some books have 1 $500 prize and a bunch of $5-$10 prizes, others have no $500 prize but have more $50 prizes,ect. Each book has the same total prize money, however it is distributed by individual tickets.

So this long time member comes in the other day and wants to buy a nice present for his brother on his 70th birthday. As the brother spends a good amount each week in the bar drinking $1 beers and playing these tabs he decides he wants to buy him $3000 worth of pull tabs. The Commander is quite happy as its a small windfall for the club, when the man insists on buying only full,unopened books. The Commander tries to explain that a $1,000 book will only have $750 worth of prizes in it, so he is much better off taking 100 from one book, a hundred from another ect,ect, but the man insists that an unopened book is the best bet. In the end, he pays $3,000 for three books that will payout $2250.

[Kat]

Some of us were not too good at schooldays math.

[Three]

Zero variance. Must not like to gamble. I am guessing he removed the tickets from the books so his brother would have more anticipation of what he had.

You buy them from a state licensed dealer for around $50 a book

I am guessing $50 a ticket. If so 20 tickets per book given the $1000 price of a book.

Commander tries to explain that a $1,000 book will only have $750 worth of prizes in it, so he is much better off taking 100 from one book, a hundred from another ect,ect, but the man insists that an unopened book is the best bet.

Guessing again that you mean $100 worth from one book not 100 tickets. What exactly would you say is the optimal playing strategy here?

He was trying to give his brother the gift of excitement. He guaranteed some larger tickets. I would have thought giving his brother $3K instead would be better. But some don't like giving cash so he bought a $2250 value for $3000. The merchant got a 33% mark up. That is probably higher than most gifts he would buy. I am not sure what a merchants profit margin tends to be had he spent the $3K on a different gift.

[dmm]

Well the EV is the same either way, but with lower risk the route the purchaser chose...

If you think buying a full book is stupid, isn't buying an individual ticket or group of tickets just as stupid?

[muffdiver]

Well the EV is the same either way, but with lower risk the route the purchaser chose...

If you think buying a full book is stupid, isn't buying an individual ticket or group of tickets just as stupid?

The stupidity level is directly proportionate to the amount of tickets bought.

[shadroch]

For $50, the book contains 1,000 pull tikets. Tickets sell for $1 a pop. In some books, one ticket will be worth $500. In other books, the top prize will be $50, but that book will have multiple $50 and $20 winners. Overall, each book will have $750 in prizes. The beauty of them is the vast majority of winners are in the $1-$2-$5 range and most people who win simply trade in the winning ticket for more tickets.
Sales of these tickets help keep the bar selling bottled beer for $1 so I can't complain.

The optimal play is to stay away.

[dmm]

The stupidity level is directly proportionate to the amount of tickets bought.

I suppose I was thinking of the stupidity on a binary scale

good point, though.

[Frostbyte]

The stupidity level is directly proportionate to the amount of tickets bought.

This could be AP'd, though... don't you have a guaranteed edge any time the total number of tickets remaining is less than the total value of prizes remaining? That's when you swoop in and buy the whole remaining book.

[dmm]

If you are able to buy tickets from one book, and you knew the result of all tickets from that book, I believe you could start buying them 1 by 1 and plan on profiting.

If a book had 100 tickets at $1/ticket, and 99 tickets are worth $0 and 1 ticket is worth $75, you just buy until you get the $75. This should be +EV as well, right? (Other iterations of the ticket values would work too but would be a bit more complex to figure out...)

[Frostbyte]

If you are able to buy tickets from one book, and you knew the result of all tickets from that book, I believe you could start buying them 1 by 1 and plan on profiting.

If a book had 100 tickets, and 99 tickets are worth $0 and 1 ticket is worth $75, you just buy until you get the $75. This should be +EV as well, right? (Other iterations of the ticket values would work too but would be a bit more complex to figure out...)

The book you describe still has a 25% HE. The %EV of the remaining tickets in a book is equal to (P-T)/T, where P is the value of unawarded prizes and T is the total number of unsold tickets. For P > T, that number is positive.

[dmm]

The book you describe still has a 25% HE. The %EV of the remaining tickets in a book is equal to (P-T)/T, where P is the value of unawarded prizes and T is the total number of unsold tickets. For P > T, that number is positive.

Right, so if you add up all possible outcomes, you get to that 25% HE. But, you stop buying after you find the winner ("P"), so I think this is worth $24.50 per book (+74, +73....+0, -1, ...-25 = 2450, divided by 100 ways to get there is 24.50 per).

[shadroch]

The problem is that all the tickets, from all the books look identical and are pulled at random by employees. I suppose an employee could gather enough information to have an occasional edge, but its not worth the effort.