Are You Kidding Me???

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Earlier today I made a pit stop at Casey's General Store, a convenience store and gas station well known around the Midwest, to get some beer and a Powerball ticket. Just a friendly reminder that that jackpot is worth $1.8 billion, and the drawing is tonight at 9:59 P.M. central, 10:59 P.M. Eastern. I am pretty sure someone will win this tonight, but I said that two drawings ago. But I digress. She rang up my 30-pack of Miller Lite and I told her, "I'd also like a Powerball." "Do you want the power-play option?" she asked me. This is where you pay an extra dollar and if your win is a non-jackpot win, the win is multiplied by whatever the power-play ball is up to ten times with the exception being that the $1 million prize only doubles regardless. The most you can win, for example, on a "match 5" is $2 million. But if you win $10 on a 10-times power play you win $100. Anyway, I never play the power play option, so I told her no. Just then she held up two printed tickets. "The only reason I ask is because I have two tickets I printed wrong for a customer with the power-play option, and they didn't want them. I could have given you one of these." My interests were immediately piqued. How do I know that the two misprinted tickets would not be the 1 in 292 million that was the right 6? How in the world could I leave them on her counter? I'd be a fool. "I will take them both," I told her. "Are you sure?" I was in the moment and didn't think before I spoke. "Are you nuts?" I said. Then paused. "What I mean is, those misprinted tickets could be one of the ones that wins. Yeah, I want them." By the time she rang up the two misprinted tickets she had already printed the one I asked for. "Do you still want this one?" she asked. Again I was like, "Yeah. Of course. What if that ones the winner?" So, I aimed to add just one Powerball ticket at $2 to my pile (I have several as we speak), and wound up buying $8 worth, 2 at $3 each with the power-play option and 1 without it. Chances are I still won't win anything significant. But can you agree that I'd have been an absolute fool to pass up on the misprinted tickets? I mean, imagine the news story on that one. Casey's General Store misprinted the winning ticket that a customer refused, and now officials are trying to determine what to do with the winnings. I'd rather the news story be, "One customer walks away from $1.8 billion and another takes the big win in their stead. Talk about being at the right place at the right time if one of those tickets were to turn out to be the winner. And beyond that, how could anyone, with such terrible odds, leave any ticket on the table even if it wasn't what they asked for?