Tonight’s US lottery is up to $810 million, half that as a one-time payment. I am hoping I will be able to show the world that money will not change me. If the winning ticket was sold at a Pennsylvania Turnpike rest stop, I will let you know how well I am handling it.
I know it is silly. Still a few ticket a year are a harmless recreation.
Wow. Is that a record?
(I’m genuinely curious…and also, this thread now has a factual question. I know, Google is my friend…)
Not quite, I think. Still it is a silly amount of money. All in all, I am hoping someone somewhere gets the only winning ticket. It is less fun if it is split up among several people.
No, it’s not a record, though it may be for this particular game. I think one of the two big multi-state lotteries in the US got up to $1.6 billion and was won by three parties.
I have not purchased a ticket, so I guess I’m slightly less likely to win.
This is the Mega Millions game, I see. Meanwhile, Powerball is at 145 million, and my state’s lottery is at a paltry 16 million.
I’m always kind of bemused by people who only buy lottery tickets when the jackpot gets up into mult-million dollar territory (not talking about the OP, just in general). It seems like a weird attitude to me: “I won’t play until it gets to at least 100 million. Your jackpot’s only 20 million? Don’t waste my time with such a tiny number!”
It seems like a sensible attitude to me. The less often they buy tickets the less they lose.
There’s a sort of reasonableness behind it. If you were playing poker and folks had already anted multiple times (Jacks or better to open), you wouldn’t be allowed to sit in on the sixth or seventh round with a single ante. However, the lottery lets you come in later after weeks of people losing their money and buy in with a single ticket.
There are times when the expected value of a lottery ticket can be greater than the cost (assuming only one winner).
On the rare occasions I play the lottery, I buy 10 of the same number, to annoy anyone I share the prize with.
Maybe, although that seems to buy into the fallacy that after many weeks of no winners, a winning combination is somehow “due.” My chances of winning when the jackpot is 810 million aren’t any greater than when it’s only 1 million.
No, but the payout is, so the expected value of a lottery ticket investment is higher.
The expected value is just the payout times the probability of winning. If you have a one in 100 million chance of winning and the prize is $1mm, your expected value of a $1 ticket is only a penny. However, if the prize is $800mm, your expected value of a lottery ticket is $8 (assuming one winner, before taxes, if the $800mm is the one-time payout value).
I did hear one idea for how to improve your odds in a lottery game, though I’ve never tried this or verified it. Supposedly, for the scratcher games, the state lottery authorities publish on their websites which prizes have already been won for each game, along with what percentage of tickets have been sold for each game. So if there is a scratcher game with a total of 10,000 tickets available, it may be that 8-9,000 have been sold without anyone winning the big prize, or only 1,000 tickets have been sold but the big prize was already claimed. So the odds of winning the big prize are higher in the first instance than the second one.
A lottery ticket is a license to fantasize. When you’re holding a ticket, you have a non-zero chance of winning, and that lends a certain richness to the daydream. On the (very rare) occasion that I buy a ticket, I want the fantasy to be about having untold wealth. A 20 million dollar jackpot would be fantastic, but would still require a practical approach to dealing with it.
If I’m not going to win the lottery, I’d rather not win a billion dollars. 
Plus, I imagine that playing it weekly would make the fantasizing part much less entertaining.
My husband jokes that the odds are close to the same whether or not you buy a ticket.
I think Dogbert was selling week-old lottery tickets at a discount. Why not? The odds of winning are only slightly less.
ETA: Here it is:
The current cash payout is 470.1 million. That can go up depending on ticket sales today. The national lotteries always pay out more than half for cash payouts.
Due to my 2 large wins* in lotteries, I figure I am still way ahead of the game. I dropped $40 on today’s drawing. If I win $3, I will consider myself lucky.
*Split a 1 million dollar win in my state lottery with 2 others in 1992, won $50,000 on Power Ball in 2019. On the Power Ball win, I was one inverted number away from winning $170 million.
I wish there were to automatically enroll myself in buying 1 lottery ticket for each Mega Millions, Powerball, etc. so that I wouldn’t have to go to the hassle. The chances of winning are nil, of course, but it’s the hassle and “mental investment” that I don’t like. I would like some sort of a subscription system.
There is a game in Florida called Jackpot.
Thing is, you get 3 numbers for a buck, not one.
Odds are right around 3 million: 1, so even after taxes it appears to be a good bet for sufficiently high jackpots, and that’s completely ignoring the secondary prizes.
There is a cap on the jackpot tho of 2 million, and it’s been stuck there with no winner for over 2 months now. I get 1 ticket per drawing (2 per week).
However, the random number generators have not been properly programmed. You see, for an extra buck you can get a combo ticket, where if at least 4/18 numbers match the actual drawing you can win additional prizes. Except that the RNG hasn’t been coded to eliminate duplicates, thus lowering your odds. Have to manually fill out your own numbers to avoid that.
I no longer play random combos after I noticed this.
I love the posts from people who say they won’t buy a lottery ticket for less than a $100 million prize. Really? Are you so wealthy that having an extra $50 million in your bank account wouldn’t change your life? If so, you don’t need the money, and it’s better if it goes to someone who really needs it.
I kinda think it depends on the person’s mindset. If they just come right out and say “A measly ten million isn’t nearly big enough to pay attention to. It’s not worth my while until it gets up above a hundred million,” then I’m left scratching my head.
If the mindset is “I only want to play occasionally, and the bigger jackpots are more compelling,” then I could nod and agree. As an infrequent player, I’d want to approach it so that if I win, I win as much as possible. And if I lose, it’s all the same anyway.