The Office Powerball Pool
My dad has played Powerball twice a week since it entered the state of Kansas. I don’t ask about how much he’s won over the years, because I’m certain that I don’t want to know. The game wouldn’t exist if it payed out more than it brought in, so it just doesn’t make much sense.
“But someone’s gotta win, and it might be me.”
I make one exception, and that’s the office Powerball pool that starts up once the jackpot gets fairly high. Even then, I don’t play because I think we’ll win. I play just in case we win as an insurance premium on being left behind. I don’t want to be the guy left behind when half of the technical team is no longer financially obligated to show up every day.
$100 Invested in 100 $1 Lottery Tickets made it to the front page of Hacker News the other day. I read it, thinking the whole time my dad’s experience with the lottery. And then I recalled our latest office pool stats:
- 29 people
- $5 each (+ an extra dollar from the pool leader to get us an even number)
- Two runs at the jackpot at $146 each.
- $26 in winnings.
Any money won in one drawing is rolled into the next “until we hit the big one.” We’ve developed a system for efficiently turning any sum of money into zero dollars. The more we lose, the more it feels like the insurance premium that it is. I keep paying, and I’ll probably never use it, but I dread facing the on-call rotation while we ramp up staff if the pool ever hits.