The lottery is a system for allocating prizes to people in a way that relies on chance. Its rules typically specify the frequency and size of prizes and how much of the pool goes to administrative costs, advertising, and profits. The remainder is available to the winners. The prize amount can be a small sum, or it can be substantial—as in the case of the record-setting Powerball jackpot.

Historically, the first lotteries were used to finance projects like building town fortifications or providing charity for the poor. They also served as a sort of get-out-of-jail card for those with criminal records: winning a lottery ticket was often enough to gain them immunity from arrest, at least for certain crimes.

By the fourteen-hundreds, state-run lotteries began to emerge in Europe and then America, where they spread quickly despite strong Protestant proscriptions against gambling. These new advocates, Cohen writes, argued that since gamblers were going to participate anyway, it was unfair for governments to deny them the opportunity to pocket profits from their activities.

The most basic elements of a lottery are a system for recording the identities of bettors, the amounts staked by each, and the numbers or other symbols on which they bet. The bettors may write their names on a slip that is then deposited with the lottery organization for shuffling and selection in the drawing, or they may buy numbered tickets, usually with a box or section on the playslip marked to indicate that they are accepting whatever numbers the computer picks for them.