As a gambler, have you ever felt this kind of mentality? That is, let's say in sports betting, wherein you bet on the long shot or a huge underdog but at the back of your mind, you thought that you will not win, but there is still small hope inside of you that this could be a life changing and so you go and bet with your close eyes. And this could be just you are relying on your luck and nothing more and that it could also be bad for us gamblers in the long run. But then again, we love to take risk and so maybe there will be some of us who might be already have this in mind as a kind of "strategy" and they could have won money already. Are you that type of gambler that has kind of mentality? It could be that is obviously flawed in the beginning so there could be gamblers that are now willing, or maybe as I have said, we might have been using it already but we just didn't know.
I honestly don't see what you said here as a "lottery ticket" mentality but it's all good, this type of thought is something that happens to me almost all the time, especially when I am placing bets on parlays, like those that have up to 15 to 20 legs/matches in one ticket, it could be a mixture of multiple sports games like football, table tennis, hockey, basketball and so, or it could be simply just football, but for bets like this, I usually have that thought that I won't win it but let me still try anyway, I go ahead and try, but one thing I've always made sure of is to only bet a tiny amount of money on such games since I already know that my chances of winning is extremely very slim, so I bet money I know I can peacefully afford to lose.