Bad beat jackpot or lottery?

[Sniper]

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Selective players have a definite edge over chronic players.

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Yes, it is very important, to only play when your numbers are going to come up!! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Jimbo]

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in my example (just making sure):

chances of hitting lottery - 100-million
amount to win - 10-million


Did you think I was using the same number perhaps and just didn't see the extra zero in there? Or are you saying something that is about 9-zillion miles over my head?

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Bob,

You are forgetting the payouts other than the top prize. If the lottery payed out every dime it took in it would be EV neutral, since there is no lottery which does this (nor a reasonably simple method to accomplish said goal) the point is moot.

Jimbo

This is not even close to what I meant.

A selective player can wait for the game to be +EV by only playing when the jackpot hits a certain point.

Where is he making this money? Where is the +EV coming from? Money is not being invented. He is effectively taking it from the players that play every time.

The only way I can see the lottery being EV-neutral is if exactly X people played exactly X-tickets every week and no one new started playing and no one ever stopped playing.

Perhaps someone should explain why I am wrong.

[Skipbidder]

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This is not even close to what I meant.

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He knew that.

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A selective player can wait for the game to be +EV by only playing when the jackpot hits a certain point.

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Which will end up being the same frequency that I play the lottery, which is never. (Or aren't you taking into account taxes, splits, and the decreasing marginal utility of extra dollars in a large prize?) You are going to have an extremely difficult time finding +EV situations.

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Where is he making this money?

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He isn't making any money.

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Where is the +EV coming from?

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You made it up.

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Money is not being invented.

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Correct.

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He is effectively taking it from the players that play every time.

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He is effectively donating his money just like everyone else.

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Perhaps someone should explain why I am wrong.

[/ QUOTE ] I really can't explain WHY you are wrong. Perhaps you weren't paying any attention in your classes.

I guess I should try again to clarify my position...

All of my posts have been in reference to a hypothetical lottery where there the total prize pool is exactly equal to the total number of tickets sold since the last jackpot.

A post claimed that such a game would be EV-neutral for ALL players. I refuted this claim under the grounds that selective playing can allow you to make the game +EV.

I did not say these situation come up often, but they can.

Imagine a simple lottery with a 1 in 100 chance of winning and a population of 3 people (a,b,c). Each week a and b play the lotto and basically throw their money back and forth. c only plays when the lottery hits 100+ (50 weeks with no winner) I am claiming that c has found an +EV situation and that this lottery, despite having no fees extracted, is not EV-neutral, and is -EV for the chronic player.

Please tell me why this thinking is wrong.

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I really can't explain WHY you are wrong. Perhaps you weren't paying any attention in your classes.

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I am sorry if I am not yet smart enough to post on this forum. Thankfully, your reply will be my first step to understanding a little more about EV,etc.

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This wouldn't be the case if they took 0% - the prize money total would equal cost of tickets if 0 was taken out (making it EV-neutral)

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Not true. If they took 0%, then it would be Zero-Sum for the players, but not EV-neutral. Whether it's +EV or -EV always depends on how big the jackpot has gotten. Above a certain pot size, it becomes +EV for the player.

TheDrizzle in on the right track -- a player who only plays when the pot is big enough can be +EV on a jackpot. HOWEVER, it is not enough to compare them and the person who plays "chronically." You have to also consider the variance.

When the +EV payoff is adequatly rare, you need to modify your thinking. Let's say the chronic player plays 1,000 hands per month, 12,000 hands per year, always playing the bad beat. Let's say the smart player plays 2,000 hands per month, and they only play the jackpot half the time, when it is over the profitability threshold, so they both play 12,000 jackpot hands per year.

The smart player's odds of hitting are pretty much the same as the poor player's odds: VERY POOR! In fact, at their play rates, they can not expect to hit this year, or the next. . . they can probably only expect to hit once, on "average," over the course of many, many years. And when your frequency of hitting is measured in years, common variance can easily mean that you never hit in a lifetime. (Think about it -- if your odds of hitting a 1 in 10 per year, how odd is it to have 20 years with no hits? Actually, not rare at all.)

If the variance is so big that not hitting in a lifetime is a possibility, then the +EV nature of the bet is irrelevant; you can only expect to experience the cost half of the equation, and the cost half is all -EV.

So the upshot for a smart player: unless they play so many hands that they can approach the long term (and long term is defined not in terms of poker hands, but in terms of jackpot HITS), then they can not consider the jackpot to be +EV. It's merely a $.50 loss per raked hand, much like a lottery ticket. It's money thrown in with no realistic hope of return.

Bad Beat games are worthwhile if the game there is better -- better to the tune of $.50 per hand won -- and it might be worthwhile if you play so many hands that you can expect to approach an average number of Bad Beat hits. For other cases, the jackpot is best considered non-existant!

Then again, you may ENJOY playing the Bad Beat. Adds some fun to what is otherwise a grind, and the awful play there rewards the savvy better. If you can expect to get value for that $.50 per winning hand, well, then you've got your Expected Value right there!