Quote Originally Posted by Shelby07 View Post
I'd agree if you had 5 bowls with 1-200 in bowl 1, 201-400 in bowl 2, 401-600 in bowl 3, etc. Then and only then would you cut the odds down to 1 in 200. Each draw would give a different set of people a chance of 1 in 200, but the'd only have 1 chance. It seems that, for these purposes anyway, 1 chance in 200 is very different than 5 chances in 1000.

Here's another way of thinking about it. One chance in 200 means that after 200 draws I would be guaranteed to win, no matter what number I had. But in your scenario with 1000 balls in the bucket there would still be 800 losers after 200 draws.
Okay, I'll buy the "if I buy 200 tickets then I have to win" point. That's not how Famous advertised it IIRC, but if they worded it so that you and others drew that conclusion, then they were wrong.

Note, however, that the statement does not hold true for the chances published for any lottery or game of chance, or in probability and statistics. It is usually defined in terms of what happens on average; in the long run. You flip a fair coin; chances are 1 in 2 that you'll get a head in one flip. The odds don't guarantee that you'll get a head - and only one head - if you flip a coin twice (or flip two coins simultaneously).