Thetownend.com

Bouyed on by i great news today, coupled with getting paid today, i decided it was time to test out a theory that i've been thinking about for ages.....

When most people buy scratchcards, they'll just get one or two on their way out of Tesco's after the weekly shop. Odds are stacked against them, and even a win of £1-£2, will be immediately reinvested in another....until they lose. My plan is for a large investment in one roll of the same scratchcard. Small wins can be clubbed together, while any large win of £10+, should propel me towards break-even. Any larger win (£50+) would instantly put me in profit... i figure there is a larger chance of you getting a big win by buying 50 from the same roll, than 1 or 2 from different rolls.

So, 50 "Hot 7's" have been purchased this evening, and i'll be testing out my theory shortly....i shall report back

How exciting :D

you stupid fucking cunt i hope you lose every dime

Sounds interesting, look forward to hearing the result.

I was gonna do this recently. My mate won £50 on a scratch card the other day. He bought 50 more and was up a bit. But eventually he lost it all because he just bought more scratch cards with his winnings.

Post your results please.

I once tried this with 6 £2 scratch cards and i only won £2 off one of them so lost a tenner. If this works i might consider doing the same. Did you feel stupid asking for 50 cards though?

I bet they gave him a card for Gamblers Anon

Very. It was busy in Tesco too, i looked like a right nutter 8)

Done 25 of them, £9 won so far....lets hope the second 25 hold more luck :)

I hasten to add, that my flatmate is doing the same over the weekend. Any profit will be split (not looking likely though)

What are the odds printed on the back Village?

1 in 5.01. And i've only had 2 winners in 25 so far :(

That's some stange logic you've got there, village.  

Good luck with the rest though :D

Not looking too promising so far Village, hope your flatmate has a bit more luck!

Finished up with £19 :soapy tit wank:

Easy come, easy go

If only you had bought £51 worth...

But do you now accept the loss or go for the outrageous re-investment?

I quit while i'm behind

booooooo

I might continue this tonioght. I got a bonus today so need to invest it somewhere sensible.

its exactly what they want you to do, buy shit loads, thinking you can beat a system that you can't... if you bought ALL the tickets you still wouldn't make a profit as something like 30% goes to charity - if you bought 10 million tickets, and after you got all that silver shit out from under you fingernails, you'd be lucky to come away with a 3 million loss...

assuming the "1/5 chance of winning" written on the back means you need to buy 5 to stand a reasonable chance of getting a win on one card, then if you buy 50, you expect 10 to win (does that agree with what you observed ?).

You can then estimate your chance of making a profit if you know the distribution of winning cards. I bet its something like a logarithmic scale where 50% of winning cards = 1pound, 20% = 2pound, 10% = 5 pound, 5% = 10 pound, 2% = 20 pound etc...

To make a profit, you need each of those 10 winning cards to be worth more than 5 quid.  if the distribution is like that above, then you will win more than 5 quid a further 20% of the time (20% =100% - (50%+20%+10%)).

So I reckon, if you buy 50 cards, the chance that your 10 winning cards all bring you more than 5 quid each is 1/0.2^10.... which is a little bit better than one in 10 million ...

probably you are better off just buying one, then you have a 50%*20% = 1/10 chance that you will win more than a quid.  Of course, the more cards you buy the more likely to win the one big prize, but if 1 million tickets are sold, there is a 1/1million chance of winning it on one ticket.  You could buy a thousand tickets and increase your chance linearly, but frankly 1/1,000 and 1/1,000,000 might just as well be the same - in the statistics world we would call these both mathematically equivalent to fuck all, and one of those options would lose you a grand.

basically, scratch cards are not a recommended investment strategy. the best way to get anything out of scratch cards is to be nice to people and hope that your sunny and pleasant disposition will encourage anyone that gets lucky to be nice to you on the unlikely scenario that they win anything.  Or rob them.

Somebody always has to ruin the fun.

Good investment stratagy they may not be, however, they get top marks for top fun scratching action.

if spending 50 quid to get 19 back is your idea of fun, try just taking 31 to a pub instead.  Works for me, plus there is more chance of finding a couple of pound coins down the back of the chairs in the pub, 5ps in the urinals, etc...

I can guarantee, 0% of my winnings will be going to charity. 100% will be going on al-key-hole :D

im currently continuing this experiment.

Good man! £50?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v158/onionjimmy/CIMG1136.jpg

They would have looked much nicer in columns of 10!

8)

i won £28!!!

that means I lost £22. I'm better than yoooooooooou. la la la la la


but im still a loser

your carpet is rank

You're mad OJ. Learn by Villages mistakes! :/

You should now put the money you won on the spurs v bolton game

I bought two scratch cards yesterday and won £1. So does that make me the most successful?

you got 50% back I got 56% so I win ass face