As far as I can see, the only thing we can do to maximise payouts is to choose numbers that are not likely to be chosen by others. Apparently there are a great many people who choose 1,2,3,4,5,6 for example, and numbers below 31 are chosen because of birthdates more than higher numbers.
No doubt someone has analysed it all but I don’t play so have never searched for it.
I caught part of a broadcast of the announcement that the UK lottery price is going to double from £1 to £2. I am sure I must have misheard the commentator say that because fewer tickets will be sold as a consequence of this, the chances of winning will be increased. Nonsense of course.
I was a kid when this happened, and Nick Perry was a local TV personality in Pittsburgh. He was host of “Bowling for Dollars” or something, which aired right before or right after the daily number lottery was drawn live on TV.
The plan was ingenious. They used a syringe filled with white latex paint, and weighted down every ball in the machines but the 4 and 6 ball. If the number wasn’t a straight 666 or 444, he would have most likely gotten away with it. Triple numbers are heavily played anyway, so when 666 came up and they had a record payout, the in investigation was on. If you ever get a chance to see the replay of the drawing, it’s pretty obvious watching it in slow motion that something was amiss. The ball would get sucked up a shoot in the middle of a machine blowing air up from the bottom and mixing the balls. The only two balls that ever got high enough to be sucked up were the 4 and the 6 ball.
Because of the way betting is permitted on the daily number, they bought a bunch of 4 and 6 number combos and boxed them, which meant ANY combination of 4’s and 6’s would win. They really got caught by bad luck.
Chrishartato Ongkoputra hit on another successfull “win the lottery scheme”.
He worked at the newsagency in Sydney, Australia.
Any and all little stores that sells the lottery tickets also provides, and RECEIVES, forms to claim prizes.
So one day a $500,000 prize claimed at Ongkoputra’s store, by some british tourists.
No problem. Unstaple the winning ticket from the claim form, and send a NEW FORM into the lotteries office naming Ongkoputra Chrishartato as the winner, with Ongkoputra Chrishartato’s bank account details too, of course.
The real winners were also overseas visitors, and only began checking with the Australian lottery once they were back in the UK, so Chrishartato Ongkoputra had $500,000 in cash back in Indonesia before his fraud was discovered.
He hasn’t returned to Australia to defend his claim to the ticket…
You can find newspaper articles which tell the story
Perhaps. I do know that the chances of me ever getting a windfall of several million dollars by any non-lottery method are non-existent.
I liken it to a huge field where a bolt of lightning is guaranteed to strike a single spot. I’m happy to pay a small fee for the right to stand in the same spot for every lightning strike.
(Plus, my chances are enhanced by the Charlie Bucket factor. :D)
Except that no one in recorded history has been killed by a meteorite, and the known number of people that have been hit by one can probably be counted on one hand. So no, winning the lottery’s way more likely than getting hit by a rock from space.
Nonsense. The wager is so small relative to even the base payouts that it makes little to no difference whether your buck puts you in the running for $2M or $1B.
Your odds are exactly the same in any case and only in mathematical abstraction is a $1B lottery ticket a “good bet” while a $2M one is not.
I think it was Fran Leibowitz who put it best: “Your odds of winning the lottery are the same whether you buy a ticket or not.”
@Darth Panda, the problem with lottery proceeds going to schools is that it became something of a bait-and-switch. The California Lottery was sold to the voters as being added funds to education; within a few years the state had simply reduced other, tax-based funding by that amount. I suppose you could faintly praise it as alternative, voluntary taxation, but then you have to deal with the socioeconomic issues - you are taxing the poor heavily to pay for something they benefit the least from.
I wasn’t making a comment as to the merits, what I was trying to convey is that when I spend the money, I don’t see it as a chance to win anything, I see it as a donation (ie, I’m not getting anything in return for this money). It’s really just a joke on the fact that unless you’re playing with the intent of losing, you’re doing it wrong.
My “It has happened” beats your “could never have happened”.
Yes, the lottery paid out. Yes, many if not most lotteries have changed their rules to discourage it in the future.
Do you personally know anyone who invested in that scheme? I did. Quote:
“The fund is the brainchild of Stefan Mandel … who was behind a number of Melbourne-based lotto syndicates” …Check out my thread moniker.
1992 was 20 years ago, and I am ready to be corrected about the ultimate fate of the money.
You could easily be killed by one if someone picked it up and bashed your head in with it. Now, killed by a meteor, that’s something else. Or is that a meteoroid?
As I argued with a co-worker just yesterday, these ‘facts’ are not facts.
His argument was that you had a greater chance of being struck by lightning while riding a poodle than winning the powerball. I immediately asked him how many people were struck by lightning while riding poodles last year, because as far as I knew it was zero. The number of people who won the Powerball on the other hand, was at least a dozen.
So… How many people were killed by meteorites last year? If it was less than a dozen in the USA alone, then it is not a valid comparison.
Likewise, the Fran Leibowitz comparison is pure horseshit. Zero people who didn’t purchase tickets won the lottery. Scores (and maybe hundreds at this point) of people who did purchase tickets have won the lottery.
Technically, you’ve got 500 times the odds of winning 1/500th of $2M. $4000 doesn’t sound so appealing. Sure, paying $1 for $4000 is pretty good ROI, it’s not $2M.
