New Jersey Adds Absolutely Useless Internet Component To Lottery
from the um.--but-why? dept
You may remember the New Jersey Lottery website because of their slightly disturbing practice of requiring your mother's maiden name to sign up for a "VIP membership" online. Now, however, they've gone a bit further in misunderstanding the point of the internet. Apparently, after reading all the stories about how online gambling is the big thing these days, someone at the NJ Lottery decided it was time to add an "online component" to their offerings. Of course, whoever decided to do so didn't seem to spend much time figuring out what that internet component should be. If you buy a certain instant lottery ticket in New Jersey, you get a "second chance to win!" by going online and playing a silly game that isn't a game at all, because the results are predetermined. Even better: you don't have to go online at all. You can just ask the guy who sold you the ticket to scan it and see if you're a winner. Also, you can't buy the tickets online, or claim your winnings online - you have to go back to the store for that. In other words, the online component is completely meaningless. It's just there so you can go online and watch a little game blip across your screen. Of course, for the privilege of nothing in particular, the tickets cost $4, which seems a bit steep.
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Scratch and
Actually, Mike, *all* instant-win lottery tickets are predetermined. There's nothing stopping the lottery stand operator from scanning a ticket without scratching and telling a buyer at the point of purchase if it's a winner.
The online component sounds to me like an identical copy of the scratch-off ticket placed in a secondary location. It gives NJ two things: one, something else to hype; and two, the chance that some folks won't go online to check their winnings, reducing the redemption rate.
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Re: Scratch and
The computer, even if picking randomly when you start the game, has pre-determined if you will win. The problem is how far in advance the computer should be determining this.
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Re: Scratch and
David's comment is correct. The "instant win" tickets are sold in batches of, say, 100 tickets. Among those 100 tickets are about $80-$90 of winners (depending on your state, etc.). The net effect is that the retailer is GUARANTEED a $10 return on that $90 investment. For some games, there is also a chance of the larger winners ($50 or $1000), for which the retailer will be reimbursed if you're not forced to mail the ticket in to redeem it.
What this means for some players is that when the retailer gets toward the end of a roll, a savvy fellow will compare the KNOWN (not expected) return on the remaining tickets with the face value of the tickets and, in appropriate circumstances, buy all the remaining tickets for an even greater guaranteed return.
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