Virginia Lottery

Here’s a story I was initially going to ignore, but it keeps making the rounds and presents itself as an excellent lesson in gambling math. Here are two links to essentially the same story, but being reported as newsworthy from different corners of the online media: NBC News and New York Post. I’m sure there are plenty more of these commercials being reported as news, but these two links prove my point.

A wonderfully lucky lady named Deborah Brown played the Virginia Lottery Pick 4, February 11, 2019, using the numeric combination of 1-0-3-1. She initially bought 20 $1 tickets using this same combination, then went back and bought 10 more $1 tickets, all bearing the same numeric combination.

The story going around the interwebs is that she won the lottery 30 times in a single day! The headline implies she won 30 different “games” on a single day. Holy smokes, imagine the luck this woman has!

This story is actually an advertisement for the Virginia Lottery, as all winning stories are. The lucky lady is indeed lucky and I wish her well!

So, what’s the math lesson? There are a couple things here the discerning reader should consider. First, she did not actually win the Pick 4 30 times, as the story wants you to believe. No, she won the Pick 4 a single time, but bet it a total of 30 times by purchasing 30 individual tickets with the same winning combination of 1-0-3-1. Or, in other words, she could have simply bet $30 on a single ticket with this winning numeric combination.

But here is the real math lesson…

Each winning ticket earned her a $5,000 prize. The odds of matching all four numbers in order is 1 in 10,000, according to the Virginia Lottery.

Okay, we find the actual odds of any numeric combination being drawn, randomly, in the Virginia Lottery Pick 4 are 1 in 10,000. Hence, a $1 winning ticket should return $10,000. Our lucky winner received exactly half of the actual odds to win. Instead of taking home a check for $300,000, she was presented with a check for half, $150,000. Adding insult to injury, that great big win is further reduced by the income taxes she must pay. So, the $300,000 is now worth much less than that, probably $75,000.

I’m sure proceeds retained by the Virginia Lottery go to good things like education and public parks and salaries for all of the Lottery’s employees…but here’s the deal – Every $1 ticket sold/purchased is immediately worth exactly half the face value of the ticket. The proceeds of winning a jackpot are further reduced by the taxes on those winnings, which are conveniently deducted from your winnings, before they issue you the real winning check.

You better be lucky, super-lucky indeed, if you intend to win any money at these terrible odds!