Raffle rules clarification?

[NatetheGreat]

I was calculating the expected return on purchasing a raffle ticket (or 10) for the fun of it, but noticed a bit of ambiguity in the rules.

Quoting the ToO Raffle rules:

The value of your bought tickets will go the Jackpot. The Jackpot already holds 10.00 $ per round. The more players the round has, the higher the Jackpot gets of course. After the draw period a winner (or even none) is selected by random. If no one wins, the Jackpot will grow even more. So good luck!

Regarding that bold bit: Under what circumstances would no winner be selected, and what's the exact likelihood of that outcome (if an exact likelihood can be determined)?

[bookworm]

I've noticed that before too, but I enter nearly every week and have never witnessed a no winner outcome. I assume that's just the default description and refers to a feature that was disabled for our implementation.

[NatetheGreat]

Hmm, you're probably right.

According to my calculations, it's basically impossible for your expected return, averaged over many ticket purchases, to ever be zero or below.

If you purchase just one ticket, here are your expected returns (above what it cost you to buy the tickets) by how many tickets other people buy:

1: $5
10: $0.91
100: $0.10
1000: $0.01
1998: $0.01
1999: $0.00

And for five tickets:

1: $8.33
10: $3.33
100: $0.48
1000: $0.05
5000: $0.01
9994: $0.01
9995: $0.00

And for ten tickets, the maximum you can buy:

1: $9.09
10: $5.00
100: $0.91
1000: $0.10
5000: $0.02
10000: $0.01
19990: $0.01
19991: $0.00

It's up to you to calculate how much your time is worth in fake Internet points.

[bookworm]

It's up to you to calculate how much your time is worth in fake Internet points.

It takes a lot of time to click the 'buy ticket' button

[NatetheGreat]

It's up to you to calculate how much your time is worth in fake Internet points.

It takes a lot of time to click the 'buy ticket' button

Touché.