Poor Man Doesn't Win Virginia State Lottery Texas Hold'em Game

Carl Jackson (at right), a poor 43-year-old African American male, did not win any money in the Virginia state lottery instant Texas Hold'em scratch game last week.

Carl spent much of his meager weekly earnings on the new, popular $5 Texas Hold'em scratch tickets. Said Carl, "Yeah man, I didn't win. But this Texas Hold'em game has got me hooked, and now I gotta get my fix somewhere, ya know? Me and all my friends play the lottery all the time man."

Virginia, which is the home state to Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte, co-sponsor of H.R. 4411, an anti-gaming legislative bill, runs a very well promoted state lottery that recently began selling Texas Hold'em scratch tickets. The tickets have been a huge success. Says the Virginia lottery website:

"You’ve seen Texas Hold ’Em on TV. Now, you can scratch and play. For an ante of $5 you get to see what your opponent is holding. The pot goes as high as $100,000. With three hands on five tables - you could beat your opponent up to 15 times on each ticket! Go all in and see what happens!"

The Virginia lottery doesn't provide actual odds of winning its Texas Hold'em scratch game on the site. However, when playing actual live Texas Hold'em, in the absolute case worst pre-flop scenario, you are never any worse than about 11% to win a hand, so we imagine you've gotta have about the same odds with this new scratch game.

Comments

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[Kid Dynamite]

can i buy these online? that's not illegal right?

Bwahaha, we have a Texas Hold 'Em scratch off here in Tennessee, too! Hats off to Bill Frist.

[Kajagugu]

Here are 8 bad beats I suffered in a $500,000 guaranteed $5 buy-in (I actually played twice and got 4 beats in each game). I always had the better hand when the money went all-in and got the bad beats anyway.

Hand 1) Jd-Js vs Ac-Kc - Board: 10s-10c-Jc, Qc, 7s
Hand 2) Qh-As vs 7c-8c - Board: 2s-8h-8s, 3h, 3c
Hand 3) Js-Kc vs 10d-Qh - Board: 8s-5c-5d, Jh, 9c
Hand 4) 4h-4c vs 10d-Jd - Board: 7h-Jc-Jh, 5d, Js

Hand 1) Qd-Kd vs 8h-9h - Board: 3h-7s-5s, Kh, 10h
Hand 2) 10h-Ad vs 6s-5s - Board: 4h-3h-10d, 7c, Ah
Hand 3) Qh-Kh vs 2d-3d - Board: 4d-6h-9h, 5d, Ks
Hand 4) Jd-Ac vs Ks-Qs - Board: 4h-As-Ah, 10s, Js

So if you were counting, we had two royal flushes vs full houses, we had quad Jacks vs another full house and all kinds of magical straights.

My wife says we should never try to play this WPT $500,000 Hold'em Poker Lottery scratch-off again. She totally went on tilt over this one. I guess that after playing long enough on PokerStars I am immune to these awful calls and river suck-outs.

[Drizztdj]

Is there an optimum number of ticket to buy for the best EV?

My guess is zero.

[wiley]

lotteries are genius....its a way for the government to make back some of what they pay out for welfare.