States See Lottery Sales Take Rare Dip

Why go to all the trouble of buying a physical ticket?

(NEWSER) - Poker sites may be strictly verboten , but another kind of online gambling is starting to crop up: state lotteries. Minnesota has already begun selling lottery tickets online, even offering year-long subscriptions for its Powerball and Mega Millions games, USA Today reports. Several other states are considering following suit. A bill allowing online lotto sales has already passed a New Jersey Assembly committee, and another has been introduced in New York. More»

3,107 winning tickets force lottery to pay $7.2M above drawing revenue

(NEWSER) - Lucky sevens abounded in Pennsylvania Wednesday night as 3,107 tickets won a total of $7.77 million in the state lottery’s Big 4 drawing when the winning numbers came up 7-7-7-7. Quadruple-number hits are rare, as evidenced by the fact the lottery will lose about $7.2 million on the four-of-a-kind draw. “People love to play quadruple numbers,” a spokeswoman tells the Philadelphia Inquirer . In Pennsylvania, payouts are fixed at $2,500 or $5,000. More»

A near miss gives that winning feeling, study finds

(NEWSER) - Scientists have unlocked a key to obsessive gambling—the lure of the near miss. In search of the reason gamblers keep playing even after strings of horrible losses, Cambridge University researchers examined the brains of gamblers. They found that a near miss—putting a bet on a horse that finished second, for example—stimulates areas of the brain nearly identical to those that respond to winning. More»

(NEWSER) - Casinos are making big bank off the tiniest—and oft-most derided—denomination, USA Today reports. Gambling outfits have added penny slots at an amazing rate—in the last 2 years, Nevada has removed 12,000 more costly machines to make room for 7,000 penny slots—and the move has paid off. In Missouri, for example, penny bets make up 42% of the total and a whopping 63% of casino profits. More»

(NEWSER) - The government's online poker ban isn't just hypocritical—given that state lotteries are "the nation's most aggressive promoters of gambling"—it's unfairly slandering a sport that requires great skill by labeling it mere gambling, George F. Will writes in the Washington Post. Professional poker player Howard Lederer—known as "The Professor"—believes lawmakers need to look at mathematicians' work on game theory, and realize that playing poker requires a brain-straining ability to calculate probabilities, use logic, and bluff. More»