If you’re looking to win big in the lottery, here are some tips to help you increase your chances. But remember, it’s still a gamble. So before you spend your entire paycheck on tickets, think about where else you could put that money — even if it’s just a few dollars at a time.

Khristopher Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch who specializes in the U.S. housing market and the business of sports. He previously worked for the Omaha World-Herald, Newsday and the Florida Times-Union.

The History of Lottery

The history of state lotteries has been a classic example of public policy being made piecemeal and incrementally, rather than taking a larger, more holistic view of the issue at hand. As a result, lotteries often become an ever-growing, self-sustaining component of state government that are able to evade more scrutiny or rethinking by the general public.

In the early days of state lotteries, the main argument for their adoption was that they represented a form of painless revenue, since players voluntarily spent their money to benefit the public good. This logic was also the motivation behind Benjamin Franklin’s attempt to hold a private lottery to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia in the American Revolution.

In the modern era, however, most state lotteries have developed into large, multi-billion dollar enterprises that have grown out of control and shifted the power in politics away from voters and toward state officials who rely on the money generated by the lottery for their budgets. As a result, few states have a clear gambling policy and, in many cases, public officials have little ability to limit the growth of the industry.