By Frank Thurston Green
Gambling is alright as long as people know the odds, know they’re losing, know they almost certainly always will, and keep on hoping and losing. That’s ordinary human frailty. However, many New York Lottery players are playing to win and New York State is making very dirty money off of them. The New York Lottery says it “wants to remind players that Lottery games are designed to be a fun, low-cost form of entertainment in support of education,” but it does so in willful ignorance of the naivety and delusion of many of its customers.
Many are people with extremely selective memories, people who think there’s a formula, people who think they’re “blessed,” people who flat out don’t know the odds. They’re people who don’t know that the New York Lottery has calculated its long term liabilities, its aggregate amount of prizes payable, through 2037.
Abraham (peoples’ names in this piece aren’t their real ones) works as a security guard at one of NY Lottery’s offices. He’s certain that one can “make a living” playing the Lottery. “From what I’ve been analyzing, if you’re playing $100 or more a week your chances of winning are greater because you’re playing more than the average person. But if you’re spending only $5 or $10 a week, chances of you winning are less, because there’s a certain amount of effort that has to be put into it to actually get the results that you’re looking for. This is a game right here that you have to have money to make money … People who don’t have the money to spend … they’re just playing off chance,” he said. Abraham can’t play as an employee of the NY Lottery but he says he has a “formula.” He would not share it with me.
The sheets on which Abraham fills out the winning numbers each day are marked up by people who see patterns in the draws. “For example, a few months back, a number came like four times within the space of like two months. You would never think that, but you can pick up on that,” said Abraham.
Others take a less mathematical approach, translating meaningful things in their lives into numbers with schizophrenic zeal. Solomon deploys birthdays, new license plate numbers, numbers that come to him in dreams. “I made a lot of money off my son’s time of birth, 9:12,” he said. Judith regularly plays her mother’s birthday and house number. A friend of hers had success with “1600” shortly after Obama’s inauguration. David, another player, is holding out for “911.” “It’s the end of the month [September], they’re gonna let it come out,” he explains. There is a lot of low level conspiracy theory among people picking numbers. Many take for granted that if too many people pick a given set of numbers that “they won’t let it come out.”
Solomon says he’s won $12,000 or $13,000 in the past ten years playing Numbers and that “you can make money.” He does not have an estimate of how much he’s spent playing, which is typical. Part of why people don’t know how much they’re losing is because they “win” all the time. Many people with whom I spoke, avowed that Loose Change in particular, a $1 scratch game, paid dividends. The odds of winning something on the NY Lottery’s scratch off games are surprisingly good, slightly better than one in three. On average, people are only losing 35 cents a play, a death by a thousand suspenseful little cuts. That’s virtually imperceptible, especially with the regular glow of small wins and the abiding hope of a transformative one.
The jackpots, however, are significantly less than advertised. New York State and local taxes take out approximately 35% immediately. In addition, there is federal tax. Furthermore, Abraham and other employees at the NY Lottery office estimate that a quarter of the people picking up checks have them docked further because they’re on public assistance or owe child support.
Everyone with whom I spoke, believed that “everyone” played lottery games and they’re right. However, poor and uneducated people spend a lot more money, in proportion to their incomes and even in absolute terms, than wealthier and better educated people. One study alleges that state lotteries actually target poorer people, as in “Ohio, where officials time…commercials…to coincide with the distribution of state payroll, welfare and social security checks.” These demographics set the stage for the fabled downfalls of lottery winners. “Financial planning” doesn’t mean much to someone living paycheck to paycheck.
Reforms can be made. The odds should be prominent on every lottery game. People should play lottery games through an account so as to apprise them of their bottom line ticket by ticket. Only after-tax jackpots should be posted. With those changes, the lottery could be something less than heinous predation.
Frank is an exuberant young man.
