Has anyone seen data showing whether people who use “quick picks”, versus those who select their own numbers to use, tend to win more lotteries? I’m not sure why it would make any difference but I was wondering if it’s more or less equal in terms of overall success.
They tend to win a little more money overall because quick picks select numbers that humans tend not to such as the higher ones. People often select numbers based on birthdays and things so there is a small bias for winning numbers composed exclsuively of lower numbers to have more winners than those with several higher numbers. That means the pot has to be split more ways on average.
Other than that, all combinations have an equal likliehood of winning.
Imagine if everyone in the country, except you, bought one Powerball ticket, and picked the same number.
Then imagine you bought one ticket, and used the quick pick.
Who has the better chance of winning? A: Everyone has the same chance of winning.
Who would win more, if their number came up? A: You, obviously.
Shag (and Garfield) is correct, quickpicks should win more money (for an individual), but not more often, due to lower likelihood of sharing the winnings with others who may use a system that is less random.
So theoretically, your best strategy would be to select the numbers that people usually don’t select. That should be better than quick-pick, since quick-pick might randomly give you numbers that people typically select. Although, I doubt that it would be worth the trouble to eek out this tiny margin. I would guess that quick-pick is way more popular than manual selection.
That is right. You need to get rid of all birthday type numbers, sequential series etc, any other number that people regard as meaningful etc. That would leave you with some sequence of dog numbers that would maximize payout. Of course, if someone analyses those “dog” numbers and they become popular, you have to find new dog ones. It is all about being the most unpopular kid in the class that gets picked.
For a while, I was picking all prime numbers, just to be different.
I didn’t win anything. I went back to quick picks, and went back to winning back two bucks every couple of months.
I don’t really play the lottery all that often.
I won 10 bucks tonight but not with my regular numbers. I always buy 1 quick pick per draw and if I do win anything, it tends to be on the random quick pick. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Casino games like Keno where I have tried both set strings of numbers and the quick pick function. I usually lose my shirt either way…
I once had a book about the lottery (it was actually an anthology of someone’s lottery column) about 15 years ago.
It said QuickPicks tend to win out over hand-chosen numbers by a slight margin.
I personally always go QuickPick or mental health reasons.
If you choose a “pet” number sequence, then the temptation exists to keep on playing it when it doesn’t win. The occasional QP when the lotto is high enough to pay according to the actual odds or better doesn’t lend itself to that sort of twisted commitment.
The book was quite pragmatic about your chances. They are very slim by design. One strategy suggested would be that if you hand-pick your numbers, make sure to choose a consecutive pair. Most people (at the time the book was written) don’t do this, so if you actually win, the likelihood is higher that you will be a sole winner.
If you have some money burning a hole in you pocket, you might try a straty laid out by this author.
Let’s say it’s a six-number game (the book was written before the invention of the Mega). You pick 8 numbers, then buy a ticket with each six number combo of out of your 8. That would be 28 tickets. Your odds are still marginal, but on the off-chance that you, say, match three to win $5 or some such, you’ll have that three-number combo on a whole bunch of tickets.
Just remember, as a good friend of mine used to say: the lottery is a tax on people who can’t do math.
The only tip I can give is: never pick 1-2-3-4-5-6. You would not believe how many people pick that. If you win, your share will be pocket change.
Seriously. Back when I was working as a cashier at a shop that sold lottery tickets (in MA), the winning number one day was 1-2-4-5-6-8, or something very similar. There were 21 jackpot winners, plus an enormous number of 4-number and 5-number winners. On top of that, the jackpot had been hit on the previous drawing, so each jackpot winner ended up with only $5,000. I believe the lottery commission elected to pay everyone a lump sum. This would have been sometime between 1988 and 1993. Megabucks, I believe.
One of winners was the sister of one of our regulars, he told us when she first heard the news she started going on and on about what kind of car she was going to buy with her winnings. In the end, she barely had enough to make a down payment.
[QUOTE=The Sonoran Lizard King]
For a while, I was picking all prime numbers, just to be different.
[QUOTE]
That’s probably almost as bad an idea as 1-2-3-4-5-6. Any pattern you pick just to be different, you can bet there’s at least a couple of dozen other people all thinking the same.
Somehow I think that if I go to buy lotto tickets, and at the last minute decide against playing 123456, and that night it comes in for the lotto, my first thought is not going to “Boy, am I glad I didn’t play the winning numbers!”
Better 1 million dollars shared with 100 people than nothing shared with myself.
The way that the OP is phrased, technically wouldn’t people who pick their own numbers tend to win more lotteries? Not because they have a better chance of winning, but when that string of numbers comes up many more people win. All it would take is for the sequence of 1-2-3-4-5-6 to come up once and LOTS of people win. So with 1 million perfectly random drawings, if you took a sample of the winners I think most of them would say that they won with their own numbers. Of course the average amount that they won would work out to be alot lower.
In practice however it doesn’t really make much sense to play in the first place, but if you do you should play the random picks.
Oh really? The cash option payout was $177 million, but the odds of winning were only 146 million to one. Mathematically, that makes it a good bet. Seems like the people who didn’t buy tickets were the one who are mathematically challenged.
What is the amount of money you will actually receive after taxes?
What is the likelihood you will be the sole winner?
Lastly, even though you have ‘odds’ in this kind of wager, the variance is going to be so large that you need to be prepared to lose lots of money in this kind of wager (like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars) before this kind of wager looks feasible. Can you afford that kind of variance?
The cash option payout was $120 million (after taxes), but the odds of winning were 146 million to one. Mathematically, that makes it a bad bet.
I keep hearing that logic and even if the mathematical expectation was positive, it still doesn’t makes sense because a crucial piece that defines the core of the idea is missing.
The reason most games with positive returns are viewed as good is because, given a lifetime of playing them, the typical player will come out ahead. That does not happen with lotteries. The typical player will still come up with little or nothing over the lifetime of playing because the odds of winning are so low.
The odds on the lottery are already ridiculous but I can show the point by extending it out even further. Imagine if I made a lottery where the jackpot was $100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 but the odds of winning were ten times better than that. According to simplistic odds reasoning, this would be an outstanding bet to make. However, the real expectation is that no one in the history of the world would win so it isn’t a good idea for people line up around the block to buy tickets. However, if the odds of winning were one in $10 for a $1 ticket and the payout was $100 then they would be crazy not to. The key point is expected payout over a real lifetime.
Again, the crucial point is not payouts versus odds of winning but instead the idea of the expectation coming out ahead over a lifetime of playing.
True so far…
Rest assured, you will be sharing nothing with a lot of people. Misery loves company, though. 
Thank you for putting that to rest. I will buy the occasional lottery ticket, mostly when the jackpot gets large, but I never delude myself into thinking that it will ever be a good bet.
And all it takes is for that sequence to NOT come up, and LOTS of people DON’T win. The fact that some people clump on some combos does not in any way change the likelihood of any particular combo winning.
As for the long-shot argument, remember, you will have many chances to make long-shot bets over your lifetime (not all of them on the lottery). A person who makes it a policy to always take positive expectation bets when they present themselves will, in the long run, probably do pretty well. It might be from a lottery win, it might be from some other huge windfall, or it might be from a lot of little bets adding up, but always going for the positive expectation isn’t a bad policy.
Another thing to take into consideration, though, is that the true value of money is not linear. The first $8000 or so per year that I make is disproportionately valuable to me, because that’s the amount that lets me keep a roof over my head and food in the refrigerator. Any bet which would risk my loss of that would be a bad bet, even if it had a positive expectation in the dollar value. In contrast, if I were a millionaire, there’s not all that much difference between $1000000 and $1008000. And if I had, say, $100 billion, further money would have almost no value at all, since $100 billion is enough to do whatever I want with my money and never run out. So a jackpot of $10[sup]16[/sup], at 1 in 10[sup]12[/sup] odds on a $1 ticket, is really not a good bet, after all, since $10[sup]16[/sup] is worth no more than $10[sup]11[/sup], and probably not much more than $10[sup]8[/sup].
But you are including other considerations besides the math. I was contesting the claim that the lottery was a tax on people who are bad at math. If math is the only consideration, I successfully debunked that. If you want to include a bunch of other reasons not to play the lottery, go ahead, but it does nothing to challenge the math reflected by the odds in the last big drawing.