Newspaper tests its luck with N.C. lottery

By MARK GILCHRIST

To illustrate the odds built into the new statewide lottery, The News Reporter is conducting an experiment with the two one-dollar games, putting its money on the line and shooting the works until the budget is tapped out.

The staff was given $100 cash and we dropped it all on the counter the first day, buying 100 tickets for the Tic-Tac-Toe and standard state games.

Each week, we will take the winnings from the previous week and “reinvest” it into new tickets, continuing this dance with lady luck until we either hit “Broke City,” or the jackpot, at which time our publisher, who fronted the money, would likely enter into a new strategy session.

But with the odds of our winning the jackpot at less than one in 2 million in either game, the bosses aren’t exactly ordering new furniture yet. We’ll diligently report our progress each Thursday.

The state also has games with tickets costing $2 and $5 each, prices that put them out of our reach, even though those games had much grander grand prizes.

Lotteries, like most gambling operations, are designed for the player aggregation to lose so they can make money. Individuals play in the hopes that they will be in the very small group that wins big, and in our case, winning big would mean $5,000 cash. See sidebar; What are the odds?

Our staff purchased 50 each of the Tic-Tac-Toe and NC games, with our $100. We won $32 cash, but we’ll be scratching 38 tickets next week because we also won six free tickets.

Sure, we won some cash, but the reality is that we lost $62 and we’re comforted that $21.70 of that goes right to our children’s heads. See sidebar; Where does the money go?

In the Tic-Tac-Toe game, we won five prizes, with two $1 prizes and three $3 prizes for a total of $11 won out of $50 spent.

In the state game, we had 11 winning tickets, with two $2 prizes, one $3 prize, two $7 prizes and six free tickets, for a total of $21 and six tickets won out of $50 spent.