As others have said, playing the lottery is a Really Bad Idea[sup]TM[/sup]. Chances are as close to 100% as makes no difference that you will never again see any of the dollars that you play on the lottery. You might as well flush them down the drain.
On the other hand, every single dollar you place in a bank or a CD or a money market account will remain there and will actually increase. You will get far closer to $1 million dollars by placing one dollar a year in a bank account than you will by playing the lottery every day of your life.
That said, from the research I’ve done on the lottery (and I was considering writing a book about it for a while), the best you can do with the lottery is to slightly reduce the odds that you will share the pot with other people. You do this by playing combinations that average lottery players (i.e. dumb people) consider unlikely. For instance, 1,2,3,4,5,6. This combination is precisely as likely to be drawn as any other seemingly more random combination, like 4, 14, 23, 26, 30, 31. To the extent that lottery players choose certain combinations as “lucky” or avoid others as “unlikely,” people who intentionally play the “bad” numbers are slightly less likely to have to share the pot if they win.
But since we’ve already determined that you’re not going to win the lottery, this is somewhat akin to saying you’re better off wearing a football helmet 24 hours a day instead of a tinfoil hat, in the event you get hit in the head by a meteorite.
I’d go the roulette route. It’s your best odds for winning a million dollars with minimal time or work expended. Much better odds than buying lottery tickets anyway.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 is a really bad lottery combination, and not in the sense you’re talking about. Do you think that no one else has thought of this?
I remember a run of numbers coming up in a NZ lottery when I was living there (not 1 - 6 but similar) there were many times more winners than the usual. Why? Because you’re not the only “smart” person out there. There are many people who choose 1 - 6 and other runs. When they come up you’ll have less of the pot than if you went with something that seems more random.
A 1 in 83 chance of turning $10k into $1M represents a very good bet indeed - it has a positive expected value. (IOW, if you do this 83 times, it costs $830K and on average you walk away with $1M.)
Given that casinos do have roulette, this means that those odds are wrong.
Black jack, as far as I know, is the only game you can play against the house and have a positive expected value. You’re going to have to find a casino that doesn’t continuously shuffle and allows a large variation in bets. Also one that won’t kick you out for winning too much. Pretty much you’re boned.
I don’t think we disagree. I was only using 1,2,3,4,5,6 as a example that would strike the average person as not very random. But as you point out, there are lottery players who think they’re being smart by playing less frequently played numbers (you can buy lists!) in the hope of not having to share when they hit. But as I was saying, that’s just as stupid as playing the lottery.
325,000 tickets to be sold at $20 each ($6,500,000 in planned ticket sales) with two $1 million winners, five $100,000 winners, and 770 $1,000 winners (total pay out: $3,270,000).
The only problem: the prizes were guaranteed regardless of the number of tickets sold, and only 140,467 tickets ($2,809,340 worth) sold. Only in Indiana could the state lottery lose $460K on the lottery.
But the odds for those who played were actually pretty good (as lotteries go).
For someone who likes lotteries, perhaps Deal or No Deal is a better choice? You start with a 1 in 26 chance of winning $1 million. Although if it were me, I would take an offer mid-way through the game if it’s over $130k and invest the cash.
The odds of a single number are 1 to 37, and the odds of a column are 1 to 2.167 to one. When you simply multiply those you end up with 80. But I forgot that’s “to” odds not “in” odds. which are actually 1 in 38 and 1 in 3.167. Which is where the 1 in 120 or so comes in.
And the fact that it gave a positive expectation, was the reason I realized I had made a mistake, and reason" it didn’t feel right".
I always assumed that if I was meant to win the lottery, my odds of finding an accidently discarded winning lottery ticket are only slightly lower than playing the lottery myself.
Even with fully random people, this would be true. There’s one winning number compared to millions of different numbers picked by other players. So the chance of a match is vastly larger than the chance of a winner.
I’ve always thought Wheel of Fortune was the easiest way to win lots of money. For the hardest show for the least amount I’d go with Win Ben Steins Money. Still, Ben’s was more fun to watch.
so you only need to purchase 125,000 tickets to win. Thus, the easiest (not the smartest, just the easiest) way to win in a lottery is to start with $2.5 million, purchase the 125,000 tickets and collect your million.
Me too. You were right the second time. But you’re off a little on how much one would win.
I screwed up, it’s a 1 in 120 chance. But you don’t do anything 120 times, you only make two bets. On one of the bets you bet on a number. The probability of winning are 1 in 38 (2.63%) but the pay off is only 35:1. The house edge on this bet is 5.26%. The next bet is on a column, where you bet that out of a group of 12 numbers, for instance 1 through 12, that the ball will land on one of those numbers. The probability of winning are 12 in 38 (or 1 in 3.167) (31.58%) but the pay off is only 35:1. The house edge on this bet is also 5.26%.
The probability of winning both these bets is found by multiplying .0263 (2.63%) by .3158 (31.58%). That comes to a probability of .83% or 1 in 120.48
On the first bet you will turn $10,000 into $360,000. On your second bet you will turn 360,000 into $1,080,000, for a total profit of $1,070,000