Accounting for the value of lotto free tickets

At this time the Lotto Max jackpot is at the max $70 million. It was at 70 for the Tuesday draw earlier this week but it didn't go.

I had a ticket in the Tuesday draw. I had some free play money on ALC from a $50 for $25 deposit reload bonus. I bought a $5 ticket.

In the Tuesday draw, as sometimes happens, I won a free ticket into tonight's draw. That's okay with me, a second shot at the big jackpot, or one of 29 $1 million secondary maxmillions prizes, off one ticket purchase.

It did get me thinking, what's the value of winning a free ticket? Either for the player, or the house. (of course mathematically they must be the same) The free lotto ticket could be worth something, or improbably quite a lot. it could also roll over again into another free ticket. mostly of course they turn out to be worthless since most lotto tickets just lose.

From the house perspective, how to calculate the profit or loss on each individual draw when free tickets into future draws are awarded. How would especially winnings off free tickets that the player was given be accounted for.

I realized if you set it up and think about it properly it's not that hard. The way to think about and calculate the value of winning a free lotto ticket is like this. 

In the first draw, your ticket actually won a $5 prize which was paid out. The $5 win was then "intercepted" by ALC, and the house used the $5 to purchase a $5 ticket into the next draw. ALC then gave the ticket it just bought to the player who becomes the legal owner of the lotto ticket.

To the house, everything is clean. On the first draw your ticket won $5, which is accounted as a $5 winning payout in the profit and loss on that draw. ALC can close the books on the first draw and know exactly how much came in from ticket sales and how much was paid out to winning tickets. The accountant for the first draw does not care or have any interest in how the free tickets fared in the later draws.

On the second draw the same $5 is accounted as income as a regular $5 ticket purchase, the same as buying a ticket at a corner store or on alc.ca  To the accountant on the second draw, they received a $5 payment and issued a ticket. Everything is in order and they don't care if the ticket was then gifted to some customer as a free ticket.

To the player, it's a ticket into the second draw which would have cost $5 to buy at a gas station or online. So basically you won $5 on the first draw, but the house on your behalf used your $5 win to buy you a ticket into the next draw.

ALC Pro-Line payouts have improved

In recent advertising, ALC Pro-Line has been emphasizing a more studious approach. The commercials talk about analyzing odds, studying matchups, etc. When you're ready to make your picks, then Pro-Line payouts are in line with anything out there.

This is a change in the tone of the marketing. Historically the Pro-Line advertising has featured this goofy, oafish guy and his friends. They go to corner stores and make their picks. The goofy guy is clumsy and always knocking over a display or something. He just makes silly picks and it's all good fun among friends.

In the new advertising it's a departure for Atlantic Lotto, normally a monopoly, to even acknowledge there are other options for sports betting. On the same mainstream channels and TV shows Pro-Line buys advertising, there are also commercials for William Hill, 888, Bodog, Party, Odds Shark, various online casinos. 

By appealing to the more serious player, ALC seems to realize they have lost online sports business to offshore books. In the past I calculated that Pro-Line was paying about 77 cents per dollar wagered, keeping a 23% vig for itself. This is excessive and unfair. Even recreational players who aren't good with math, who still like to play a few games every week, could instinctively tell something isn't right with the payouts.

I logged in recently due to an ALC promo. I have an ALC.ca account from promos in the past. Over on Pro-Line I noticed that payouts have indeed improved. On a two-game parley with even payouts - the house pays out the same on both sides of the bet on a totals or point spread wager. In these games, on a $10 wager the house pays out $36.10 to a winner.

So if you bought 4 $10 tickets to cover the four possible combinations. You spend $40. Three tickets lose, and one will win $36.10. So for $40 spent, $36.10 is paid out to winners, or a $90.25 payout for every $100 wagered. The house keeps $9.75 of every $100, a 9.75% vig.

This seems reasonable and is in line with standard 11/10 vig at sports books. So +1 to ALC for improving their payouts and truth in advertising.

is Pro-Line beatable

At 9.75% vig it may creates some opportunities for playing for fun and profit. The break even point can be calculated on a two-game parley at .9025. So on a $10 wager you can win $26.10 or lose $10. Let X be the fraction of the time you win your bet.

26.1x - 10(1 - x) = 0

x = 0.277

So the break even is about 28%. If you use a random number generator to make your picks you would win by pure luck 25%. Remember you need to win two bets to win the ticket.

So if from your analysis you have two good picks then the square root of 0.277 is .5263. So if you can run 53% and find two games priced at 1.9 (the .9025 payout) then you would be profitable.

If you only have one good pick there is still an opportunity. On a game where the house pays out the same on both sides you can use the random number generator to make the pick and you would win the bet half of the time. So you can run 50% on events you know nothing about such as Mexican soccer, Euroleague basketball, or whatever. As long as the payout is the same on both sides of the bet.

Or buy two tickets, with your good pick, and both sides of the even payout game. 

With one good pick, and one random pick at 50%, you need to be 55.4% on your good pick to be profitable.

There is also a limited form of single game betting now on ALC Pro-Line. For hockey it's win the game and score in regulation. These games are attractively priced. On evenly priced games Pro-Line pays out $19 for every $20 wagered. So only a 5% vig on these moneyline plays with single-game allowed.

Now there is a slight catch where the payout is not quite 95 cents on the dollar. If the game is scoreless 0-0 at the end of regulation, then the house pays out nothing and scoops all the wagers on the game. It's a bit like the 00 in roulette, but less common. So be aware of that small risk. Still 0-0 games are uncommon in the NHL, and scoring is up this year. I haven't done the research but I'm guessing it reduces the payout to maybe 94 cents on the dollar.

Still good to know moneyline NHL at low vig. It's a good format for the players and I hope it sticks. 

These games are handy for clearing play though bonuses as they pay 0.95 instead of 0.9025 on the two-game ticket. Also you only need to win one bet to win the ticket. 

 

If you're a more casual fan and not sharp action, then a trick with ALC Pro-Line is use bonuses to improve your odds. Pro-Line and ALC run bonus promotions fairly frequently so it's good to sign up for the emails so you know when something's running. 

I wonder if this will be looked back on as the good time on Pro-Line. Payouts are competitive, it is easy to get money on or off, and there are frequent promos and bonuses.

Free Play on ALC Pro-Line

It's been a while. I haven't been active in any area recently. Poker or sports. It's not looking great that I will be doing much in either area in the foreseeable future. It is what it is I guess. I may have something somewhat later to post on but will see.

Anyway after a long dormant period there has been a noticeable increase of late in emails from Atlantic Lotto. I'd guess there is some new manager there and is driving this email outreach.

Usually this is just noise that is easily ignored. However there was an interesting Pro-Line promotion. If you make a $10 bet, then you get a $10 credit from the house for another bet.

Well I couldn't pass up that opportunity. The question becomes how to structure my plays. The way Pro-Line works is you have to parlay with at least 2 plays, betting on individual games is not available.

I unfortunately don't have time for a lot of research so I was thinking of a way to realize the EV of the free play using random picks. I found some "even" NHL totals games to pick. By "even", I mean the price from the house is the same on the over as well as the under. So if the house is indifferent to what you pick, then that's even. With the same price on the over as the under, it's well suited to using a randomized approach to picking, as there's no difference in expected outcome either way.

Although I couldn't help but do a quick cursory research on the games I picked. I ended up taking the OVER at 5.5 for Colorado at Nashville, and the UNDER at 5.5 on Carolina at Edmonton. I didn't do enough research to explain my reasoning here.

I can calculate the EV of the free play. With no research and a random selection there's a 50% chance of winning on each game. I have to win both games to win the bet. So there's a 25% chance I will win the bet using random selection for the games.

Now if I win the bet (25%) I win $20.60 is the payout on these two games. And if I lose (75%) I lose $10. So the EV is -$2.35. So for a $10 wager where the house is indifferent the expected end result in my account is $7.65. So 23.5% vig, thanks ALC. it's horrible they exploit the players like that.

Anyway on the $10 free play it would also have an EV of about $7.65. So the expected end amount in my account is $15.30, so a healthy 53% profit, and it was fun to be back in the game.

Bodog $10 NL Zone

I've been playing $10 NL Zone on Bodog. It went okay. In a small sample of 1,000 hands I made a small profit. About 3bb/100. Nothing special but glad for a win.

Of course anyone can run well or poorly over 1000 hands so can't read anything into it either way. Still I'm going to call it good and move up to $25 NL Zone on Bodog. Whatever happens that will be where I play. If I bust I can reload. I'm a casual recreational player anyway.

Still it's good to win something again and complete a level. I know it's $10 NL and I can't make too much of it. There was more open limping than I expected and less 3-betting. I expect 25 will be tougher and that's fine.

So that's that. onto the next thing.

+1 for Stars Coin

I saw some email and announcements go by back around December I think it was. Something about Stars VPPs being changed into something called StarsCoin. I didn't pay much attention to it. There was something about a 1.2 conversion rate of VPP to coin which seemed generous at the time. There was also something about FPP, the truth is I could never figure out the difference between FPP and VPP.

As it happened I'm a low volume recreational player and I had about 1,000 VPPs over the years. I remember years ago in 2009 I bought a PokerStars travel mug for 1,250 FPP. I was pleased, I still have that mug and use it. I found the old email from the VIP store. Good times back then.

Anyway I checked the store yesterday for whatever reason and I was surprised to see that I could do a straight exchange of 1,000 StarsCoin for $10 of cash bankroll. That's awesome! before it was not possible for a bronze star to make this type of VPP to cash exchange and it was generally not available or badly priced below at least the silver star level. So that's yay.

The new bonus scheme at Stars seems much friendlier to lower volume recreational players. In the past it was confusing what was available and how to get anything. It's much simpler now coin is coin. And the coin all spends the same in the store, no different prices or availability based on your stellar status. As a recreational player I see these as positive changes.

Now for the $10, well the way I play and run at $10 Zoom PLO I will likely lose it faster than it took to write this post. Oh well at least I was able to get something useful for my VPPs so it's all good.

I did notice the coin seem to be earned in a more quantized way now. At this point I have about 150 hands in this month and the slider says I'm 69% to unlocking 7 coin in step 2 this month -maybe I got 7 coin earlier and didn't notice? Thus I guess if I can put in a little over 200 hands a month at $10 Zoom PLO I can get at least this tiny amount of bonus, less than a big blind. I'm sure it gets better if I could put in more volume. Still it's something and very attainable for a recreational player. In the past it was intimidating and it felt like the VPP store was tilted in favour of high stakes and mass multitabling.

resurfacing as a fish

There was a bummer 2+2 thread about heads up. meh I don't play HU myself so I have little stake in the matter. Still it got me thinking about things. I seldom play cards anyway but from time to time I feel I'd like to get playing again. There's one more barrier away from the tables I need to work through before I really can get back to playing.

The 2+2 thread combined with another thing. On a Saturday evening recently I passed through the local casino to spend $5 on slots to fill some time and get parking validated. Walking past the poker room there were 4 tables going on a Saturday night. Not very good considering when I arrived there in 2009 there were 6-8 tables on any Friday or Saturday. I hope the card room remains open.

It's a different world now it seems. Higher rake, fewer fish. And with that time to close the books and move forward.

Poker Era 1 2005-2014

I've been playing cards longer than I'd realized. I remember hearing some news reports about someone named Moneymaker and some game of poker with two cards. Started out in 2005 play money on Yahoo, then 2 and 3 table play money tournaments on PokerStars.net. Didn't have a clue. Finished 5th in the first 3 tabler I played for a mincash. What a rush. I remember the first of those play money tournaments I'd won, another rush.

Eventually switched to real money, had some success in the pre-UIGEA, pre-Black Friday days with lots of Americans and lots of bad players. Won a $2/90 tournament or two, got up to $0.25/$0.50 LHE and $25 NL, ran well at times over small sample sizes.

2009 appeared at the local casino to play $1/$2 live. Another exciting time playing for stakes that dwarfed anything I'd played online. I remember the first hand I won that night. Live poker is fun and I watched some others seem to be making steady profits. I had ups and downs, played way too tight for live, and like everyone enjoyed the occasional upswing and worked through the occasional downswing. I wanted to and was rolled for it at the time but never took a shot at $2/$5.

It was a good time and now it's run its course.

Poker Era II 2016-present

So when I return it will be as a "fish". Now I don't plan to donate buyin after buyin. What I mean by fish is someone with a losing expectation. A recreational player. With higher rake and tougher competition I have to expect that to play cards I have to put in money. And that's fine. I have a day job and I can still play for fun and the challenge. Even if I have to keep my bankroll up from the outside source. It's a hobby, something I can choose to spend my own money to participate in.

I'm still going to try to play well and improve and do as well as I can. Like the fish, I'm going to focus more on having a good time playing and less on results. Just play the levels I'm bankrolled for and enjoy the stakes. Don't hold back about "beating" some lower levels for however many hands or amount. It's ok if run well over a small sample (disregarding previous results) at a small game and take winnings and try the next level for fun and see if I can stick for a little while before dropping back to the baseline level.

Online play Zoom since I can get in the most volume per limited time available to play. Forget table selecting. That's from a past era. The tables are far worse than in the past so just sit and play Zoom and enjoy the challenge.

So I'm feeling positive about things and looking forward to getting back in the game.