A reasonable person would take the lottery ticket and immediately offer to sell it back to the issuer--or to a large insurer or casino--for a guaranteed $50k (negotiable) before the drawing occurs.
However, some options grants are not transferable in that fashion.
The reasonable person can then calculate the range of payouts for each option as [$1k..$1k], ev $1k, for the cash option, and [$0..$1M], ev $100k, for the gambling option. Not all gamblers only use expected value as their only metric. Some people also use the minimum return. Those people would take the guaranteed $1k, in cash, and walk.
Even if the gambling option had a minimum payout of $1000, thus making it the strictly superior option on paper, just by those metrics, it might also only pay off 3 days from now, when the $1000 on the spot, could be used right now, possibly in some other psychologist's thought experiment on gambling behaviors.
However, some options grants are not transferable in that fashion.
The reasonable person can then calculate the range of payouts for each option as [$1k..$1k], ev $1k, for the cash option, and [$0..$1M], ev $100k, for the gambling option. Not all gamblers only use expected value as their only metric. Some people also use the minimum return. Those people would take the guaranteed $1k, in cash, and walk.
Even if the gambling option had a minimum payout of $1000, thus making it the strictly superior option on paper, just by those metrics, it might also only pay off 3 days from now, when the $1000 on the spot, could be used right now, possibly in some other psychologist's thought experiment on gambling behaviors.