When you play the lottery you buy the chance to win, or lose
Within the gaming industry in the players membership club accounts, there is a statistic that may be kept called the Win/Loss factor. Basically it is the amount of money the player has spent over a period of time divided into the times and amounts won versus the times and amounts they lost, or did not win. The term “loss” is strictly an industry insider term and really means nothing outside of it.
The problem is, the words “lost”, “loss”, and “lose” have made their way out of the backroom gambling industry jargon and into the gaming public’s mind. This means that almost all players say that they have “lost” money playing the lottery when they don’t win a prize. But that can’t be further from the truth. The fact is, when you buy a ticket, you never lose anything.
Outside of the gaming industry vernacular, you never lose when you gamble because the only thing, but a very tangible thing in a way, that you have actually bought, actually spent your money on, is a chance to hopefully win something on the lottery. You never buy the lottery, you never buy the prize, you never lost anything because you didn’t have it in the first place. The only thing your money buys you in the lottery is a chance.
For example, if you buy a bag of chips, you have spent you money on the bag of chips. If you lose your bag of chips, that is the only thing you have lost because you already have spent the money on the chips, whether you still have the bag, ate all the chips, or lost the bag, has nothing to do with you buying the bag of chips in the first place.
If you buy and lose your ticket, then you can say you lost on the lottery because without the ticket you can’t claim any prize that ticket would have won. You have actually lost your chance to possibly win a prize. But if you check your ticket and find you did not win, then you have lost nothing at all. You bought a chance, and that chance did not end up in your favour. Once you buy the ticket, whether you win or not win is quite irrelevant.
So you need to get the idea of “losing” out of your head and start using the term, “not winning.” Saying you keep losing on the lottery or losing at Bingo is totally incorrect. You need to say your are not winning the lottery or Bingo. That simple mindset change can make a great difference in your outlook on the lottery. It will make it easy and calming to say you did not win.
So when you hear the “win and loss” phrase you need to translate that in your head to “win and not win.” Loss has no meaning whatsoever outside of the industry backroom.