Scratching the Lottery Itch

By: Ryan Cosgrove
As the taxpayers of America are digging through their W-2 forms, receipts, and write-offs it is a good time to examine a popular way to spend money from a tax return: gambling.
In particular, instant-win scratch tickets.
Most people see scratch tickets as a fun, inexpensive, and harmless way to test their luck every once in a while and they are popular throughout the state.
“I’m playing on St. Patty’s Day and hoping the luck of the Irish helps me out” said Matt Gately, 22, of Canton.
Holidays, birthdays, or other special events are a common reason people buy or receive scratch tickets and is the most easily accessible form of regulated gambling.
However, what goes as an intermittent occurrence for one person can be a serious problem another person.
An employee at a 7-11 in Rockland has seen all kinds of different people and situations and knows how quickly scratch tickets can become a kind of habit.
“I see the same people in here at the same time every Friday. They get paid, they cash their checks, and then they come here and spend their money. It’s like clockwork,” said Tommy Williams, 19, of Rockland.
The Massachusetts state lottery is well aware that their products can lead to harmful consequences and have done the responsible thing by putting multiple links to treatment centers on their website.
According to the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling, one of the sites recommended by the Massachusetts state lottery, recent studies have shown that about 6% of Massachusetts residents have experienced a gambling problem in their lifetime.
That may seem like a very small percentage, but that translates to a real-world number of over 350,000 people just in this state alone.
In Massachusetts, scratch tickets range in price from a $1 ticket to a $20 ticket with most tickets costing between one and five dollars.
Recently, one of the most popular tickets for the Massachusetts state lottery has been the $10,000,000 Hold ‘Em Poker instant win ticket.
It is a $10 ticket and in order to win, the cards that the player scratches off must make a better poker hand when combined with the community cards than the hand that the opponent has.
There are three hands of poker to scratch off on each ticket as well as a classic scratch ticket matching game at the bottom of the ticket.
“I only buy it because I like poker so much. If they didn’t have a poker scratch ticket, I probably wouldn’t buy them at all. I did hear it had the best odds, though,” said Rob Warner, 38, of Abington.
According to the Massachusetts state lottery website the overall chances of winning a prize on the $10,000,000 Hold ‘Em Poker instant ticket is 1 in 3.63.
This number, though fairly high when compared to the chances of other types of gambling, is pretty consistent with the chances of winning on any $10 ticket in Massachusetts.
The chances of winning a prize from a $1, $2, or $5 ticket drops to around 1 in 4.75 and for the only $20 ticket it increases to about 1 in 3, which are the best chances of any ticket.
Another popular scratch ticket in Massachusetts is the Boston Red Sox Million Dollar Double Play. This is also a $10 scratch ticket and has prizes that include cash, Red Sox merchandise, and tickets.
“My six-year old son loves the Red Sox and has to have everything with their logo on it, so I usually buy him one of these tickets every week. I’m just hoping that one of these times he’ll scratch off some Red Sox-Yankees tickets,” said Patrick McKearney, 34, of Randolph.
There’s a probably a better chance to get tickets by waiting in line the day of the game when Fenway Park puts the standing room tickets on sale, because the best chances offered by the scratch ticket are 1 in 28,800.
The popularity of the Red Sox is very high right now as they are about to begin another season after winning last year’s World Series, so it is not very surprising that the lottery is jumping on the bandwagon.
“You could put a Red Sox logo on anything and it would sell right now, but these scratch tickets are going faster than anything else,” said 7-11 employee Colin Green, 21, of Norwell.
Another possible reason behind the success of the Red Sox scratch ticket could be the good chance of buying a winner.
The overall probability of winning on a Red Sox instant ticket is about 1 in 3.5 which is slightly better than the handful of other $10 tickets which are around 1 in 3.65.

rcosgrove@student.stonehill.edu