i had five on it (but not anymore)

i gotta quit scratchers…

…i really do.

i’m not as bad as i used to be, but given my economic state of late i need to reign it in completely, to be honest. all this being said, the other day i was in line (to cash in a scratcher) and the guy ahead of me talked about how he had found, through trial and error, that five was the magic number. you buy five of any ticket, in a row, and you are guaranteed to win. it was just “math”.

i foolishly decided to take him up on his idea on monday, and when i bought my usual five bucks worth of lotto/mega tickets i bought five $5 scratchers that i’d had some luck with. four were a complete bust, but that fifth one (technically the third of the set) won thirty bucks, breaking the whole transaction even (paid for all tickets including the long game ones). breaking even is typically how i win (if at all), so i took the money and ran. that night the texas lotto came and went with nothing matching, but the next night the mega-millions was up and i got one number plus the bonus and won sixteen bucks, so i’d actually profited off my monday lotto exploits.

can’t let that happen, now, can we?

so when i had to make the pup ridiculousness run i decided to cash in said sixteen dollar ticket, and throw another nine in and buy five of the NEW five dollar scratcher and, viola, one of the five won…five dollars. so i was twenty dollars (technically only four) in the hole, so i doubled down and bought a sixth of the same ticket with the one winning one and came up bust.

i had a flashback to a few years ago…

a few years ago there was a twenty dollar scratcher that was guaranteed to win. but while most of em have a minimum pay out of the face value of the ticket, this one had a minimum payout of five bucks. so, technically, it was a fifteen dollar ticket (those don’t exist) because you knew you’d get five of your twenty back. very reminiscent of that. will i try a third time? probably not…things are a little snug financially for such foolishness, due to veterinary uncertainty with the new lil guy.