So I played the scratch-off lotteries starting in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic started.

I won $1,000 a couple of times along with a bunch of smaller prizes on scratch-offs.

But I never won anything beyond that, which is why I started studying the odds and found that obviously the odds for the grand prize are always better with Pick lotteries.

So I started playing the smallest Pick lottery first, the Pick 2. I won that within 2 days.

Then I played the Pick 3 and won the $500 prize within a week.

Then I played the Pick 4 lottery at the $0.50 level and won $2,500 within 2 months.

Then I played the Pick 4 lottery at the $1.00 level and after about 6 months of playing $48 every week on Friday I finally won $5,000 just before Christmas in 2022.

I only played with quickpick combos, with 2 tickets. This sometimes was two tickets of $12, two tickets of $24, or a combination of those.

In total it cost me $4,000 in tickets, and I profited $1,000 off the $5,000 prize.

At the end of the day, do I recommend it?

No, playing the game took a tremendous amount effort.

Anytime I went to the store I also bought snacks and drinks which became a bad habit.

Once you get started, and you start losing money, you’ll become a victim of the sunk-cost fallacy.

When you play the smaller lotteries it’s more likely you can finally win and recover your loss, but with the larger lotteries you may never win or recover.

I recommend just saving money every week with an account from Acorns, Robinhood, or some other brokerage.

Saving money is much more reasonable than playing the lottery, because you can always access your savings when you need it in an emergency.

With the lottery, there’s no guarantee when or if you’ll win.