To think this is not how raffles work?

[PopcornAndPizza]

Hotly contested discussion at work and although light-hearted I now think I'm either losing the plot or almost all my work colleagues are all weird.

A colleague was pleased yesterday that she had won a coffee voucher at her grandsons school raffle. She mentioned her prize was the 8th top prize and that unfortunately her ticket didn't win any more prizes after that including the top prize which was a tablet.

I was only half paying attention until the other colleague (that I think is right) then said well surely they announced that one first? To which she replied well no they did that one last to build suspense.

To help the other colleague I tried to point out that's not how it works because then your ticket isn't actually in with the chance of winning the top prize but only me and this one other lady had this viewpoint, everyone else couldn't see the issue.

It's not us is it, that's not how raffles work? Surely the top prize should be drawn first so everyone has an equal chance at winning?

I've sometimes been put off entering a raffle because I wouldn't want the big prize although I wouldn't mind a smaller one. There was one recently at work where the grand prize was an enormous teddy bear - I have no use for that whatsoever, don't know anyone who'd want it as a gift, frankly it would be a millstone round my neck. The lesser prizes were boxes of chocolate which I wouldn't have minded winning.

Yes they do if your ticket is taken out to win a lesser prize! If you buy 2 tickets to win a big prize, whatever your odds were ( 2 in 500 say) are now halved (to 1 in 500) of winning the big prize.

If you're looking at 'chances of winning any prize, no matter how small' then yes, your chances remain the same. But the chance of winning the top prize changes with every ticket that's removed along the way. That's why it's fairest to draw that one first.

The odds do change if you are not actually in the draw though. You have zero chance.

What do you mean by an "equal chance"? Your chance of winning is affected by how many tickets others buy, which you can't do anything about, as well as how many you buy.

That's how I view it as well. First one picked 'wins' and can pick the top prize or something else depending on their tastes.

You buy one ticket.

You don't win any of the seven smaller prizes. Your one ticket has odds of 1/193 of winning the grand prize.

You win small prize #5. You have no more tickets in the draw so your odds of winning the grand prize are zero.

You people arguing about "chances of winning" are getting muddled because you're actually talking about different things. There are many sets of odds here.

At the outset of the raffle, every ticket has the same chance of winning a) any prize and b) the top prize.

As the prizes are given out, each remaining ticket's chance of winning the remaining prizes will stay equal to the other tickets.

But each PERSON'S chances of winning will not be equal. That will depend on how many tickets they bought in the first place, and whether any have won.

I think it's the conflation of each ticket's odds and each person's odds that is causing the confusion.

The odds matter at the point you buy the ticket before anything is drawn, yes the odds change as tickets are drawn but that doesn't change that when you bought the ticket, that ticket had the same chance of winning the big prize as every other ticket.

It’s not a consolation if it means you now can’t possibly win the big prize! It’s only a consolation if your chance of winning the big prize has been and gone.

Particularly annoying if the raffle was advertised as “First Prize - Tablet worth £300” - the clue is in the name - first! First ticket drawn out wins the tablet.

Even more annoying if you bought a strip of 5 tickets - thinking you get 5 chances to win a prize - but the whole strip was put in the bucket, giving you only 1 chance to win a prize (which ended up being a voucher or crappy bath salts and not the FIRST prize tablet).

If there's 20 prizes and you buy 20 tickets you could potentially win all 20 prizes.
So an equal chance.

That’s not what I was responding to though, with the link.

@SociableAtWork I've never known a whole strip being counted as one entry.
If a raffle is doing that then they are doing it wrong.

Yes, but none of those rules specify anything like what the OP is complaining about. It’s certainly not a government rule that the first ticket drawn gets the top prize or first pick.

No, the odds of YOU winning each prize aren't equal in that scenario. The odds change with each ticket that is drawn.

But all tickets do have an equal chance of getting the top prize, if you calculate probability for it at the start of the raffle. If you do it after some tickets have been drawn then duh, not all tickets have a chance anymore. If you calculated after the top prize is drawn, then you could argue that all tickets have a 0 chance if winning except one which has a 100% chance of winning, and claim that’s unfair.

tl;dr It’s an ok and not unfair, stop complaining.

When the prizes are labeled with corresponding tickets, that is usually called a tombola, not a raffle.

I was going to disagree with you, but I think I see what you mean.

Before the draw, each ticket is subject to the equivalent odds of being removed - but that affects each person in different ways.

Good way of thinking about it.

This^

Every single ticket when sold has an equal chance of winning, that's what makes it fair.
Not allowing anyone to collect more than one prize is wrong if they still had tickets in the draw unless it was stated at the time of purchase.

I’ve never given this much thought but I agree with you. If they’re going to order the prizes in 1st to 10th etc. then everyone should have the highest chance they can for the top price and that should be drawn first.

In fact if they do the 1st prize last those who haven’t won a prize yet would actually have a higher chance of winning compared to the chance they had for the previous prizes.

That all said I do t think I could get too worked up about it as raffles are never that serious and usually for charity etc.

Yes. It happens a LOT and makes me very annoyed. It's a real swizz when they do that and they don't tell you before hand that is going to happen! So you think you have, say 5 tickets and in reality it is only 1 chance

@SociableAtWork It’s not a consolation if it means you now can’t possibly win the big prize! It’s only a consolation if your chance of winning the big prize has been and gone

If you're only interested in the big prize, then yes, emotionally it's not a consolation. But logically it should be.

As you walk away from the finished raffle, you now know the odds that every single ticket had from the start. If you haven't won anything, you know you held a strip where every ticket was on 0%. If you won a small prize, you know you held a strip where one ticket was on 100% and the rest were on 0%. Which is a better outcome.

I suppose it does make a big difference to how you feel whether it's one great prize and all the rest are worth 50p each; ot whether there's one overall stand-out prize but a bunch of really decent slightly lower value ones too.

I wonder if some organisers maybe see it as a bit like when winners of competitions, quizzes, awards or similar are announced - when you obviously announce the top few winners in reverse order; but there's no luck involved there, as the person who scored the fourth-highest number of points or whom the judges believed to be the second best was never in with the remotest chance of coming first.

With raffles, there's clearly an impasse where it's most exciting for most of the people there to hear the winner of the biggest prize right at the end, but in keeping the suspense until the end, you're necessarily 'picking off' people to be excluded from that potential excitement along the way, by giving them lesser prizes instead (assuming they only bought one ticket, of course) - especially if the lesser prizes are something like a free coffee voucher or a chocolate orange, rather than, say, a £30 Amazon voucher.

Sorry you’re wrong. First one drawn wins the prize decided by the organiser (the top prize or ‘runner up prize’ , or the one they choose, depending on the organisers choice.