# Lottery question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 16, 2003, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136 "2003-06-16T02:59:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/1 "2003-06-16T02:59:23Z")
If a jackpot is, say, $144 million or something like that, and the odds of winning are 80 million to 1, is it cheating to buy each and every number combination possible, thus guaranteeing a win? The way I see it, the risks are high. If even one other person wins, your cut pre tax on the jackpot would be $72 million, and after taxes it would be around $60 million, so there’s a $20 million loss right there. Other people have told me that it would be illegal. I’m not sure how that could be. There’s no limit on lottery tickets, and you’re allowed to pick your numbers. So, anyone have any idea on the legality? ---
**Author:** ![kunoichi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4da419/32.png) [@kunoichi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kunoichi)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/2 "2003-06-16T03:03:56Z")
Somehow I think the issue is whether or not you’d be able to do it. Most places won’t let you buy tickets with plastic, and not many people have $80 million in cash laying around. Best bet for legal questions would be to go to the commission that runs the lottery (probably have a website) and ask them. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/3 "2003-06-16T03:04:20Z")
An Australian syndicate has done this around the world several times. [Here](http://may.casinocitytimes.com/articles/1138.html) is an account of an attempt in Virginia. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/4 "2003-06-16T03:11:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Airman Doors, USAF \* > \*\*The way I see it, the risks are high. If even one other person wins, your cut pre tax on the jackpot would be $72 million, and after taxes it would be around $60 million, so there’s a $20 million loss right there. \*\* You get creamed on the taxes. If you take a lump sum payment and after taxes you should net roughly 33% of the jackpot. If you don’t take the lump sum payment and take it over 20 years your take will be mitigated by interest payments on the money you borrowed. Whatever the case buying every possible number is not likely to make you any money unless the jackpot is huge and no one else wins. Even then your take home amount after all your costs will be so severely cut that the motivation to do it isn’t really there. I don’t know if the state limits the number of tickets a single person can buy. Hey…it just occurred to me that if the jackpot is $144 million and you buy $80 million in tickets the jackpot is now $224 million. I don’t think I can manage the math but maybe it is a viable strategy. ---
**Author:** ![Daizy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@Daizy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daizy)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/5 "2003-06-16T03:15:14Z")
You’ll just have to move to Canada, to try this little experiment. We don’t pay taxes on our winnings. 😃 Daizy ---
**Author:** ![Ottoerotic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/6de8d8/32.png) [@Ottoerotic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ottoerotic)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/6 "2003-06-16T03:26:48Z")
From what i’ve heard it’s legal just not very possible on an everyday scale. There are 14,463,212,400 (53_52_51_50_49\*42) different possible combinations. You can pick five combinations at a time and it takes about three seconds to get five combos, but for simplicity sake lets cut the time it takes by a third to one second. So this means that you would need 2,892,642,480 seconds, or 33479.5 days if you were using one machine. There was a professor who did all the calculations once, but i can’t find his site right now so you’ll have to settle for my half-asssed math. sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/7 "2003-06-16T03:35:50Z")
Well, how about this: I just give the lottery commission the money since there’s no way I can lose, and then they do the drawing and if someone else wins I split the winnings? This is really more a thought experiment than anything else, I guess, since realistically it’s a stupid thing to do, even with the linked evidence above to the contrary. ---
**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/8 "2003-06-16T03:39:51Z")
Where is the 53 coming from otto? Most of the lotteries I see don’t go quite so high. Course, I don’t really pay much attention to them–taxes on the innumerate mean less I have to pay! ---
**Author:** ![aahala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@aahala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aahala)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/9 "2003-06-16T04:27:45Z")
One of the largest, if not the largest, lotto games in USA is the multi-state Powerball game. Odds of winning are about 1 in 120 million. You can get paid in installments or a lump sum – it’s the total installments figure that is most widely publicized. The jackpot has rarely exceeded $120 million as the cash option. As the prize rises the number of tickets solds have usually been close to the amount of the cash option. So it’s likely if you could buy every number you wouldn’t be the only winner and have to split the prize. ---
**Author:** ![Alereon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@Alereon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alereon)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/10 "2003-06-16T05:04:22Z")
You’re allowed to deduct the costs of all the losing tickets from your taxes as gambling losses, aren’t you? ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/11 "2003-06-16T08:06:45Z")
Lotteries have been refered to as “a tax for those who can’t do math” because of the probabilities involved. If there was a way to predict what numbers would be chosen for lotteries, then there would be no point in having them. Your best bet for hitting a win is to wait for some sucker to buy several loser tickets from a scratch-off venue, then buying the winning 40$ or so ticket (hopefully). Truth is, house wins, hands down…always. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/12 "2003-06-16T09:46:22Z")
You missed the point, **dnooman**. The question was whether you could more or less fix the lottery and come away with a fairly substantial profit, like buying every spot on a roulette wheel and actually profiting from it. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/13 "2003-06-16T10:22:53Z")
You don’t need to purchase every possible winning number to make a profit from a lottery (you would just be mostly getting your own money back, and losing money if you shared the top prize). Lottery Syndicates purchase just enough tickets to make their money back on the smallest winning combination (ie 3 balls plus the bonus ball out of a 6 ball draw). You purchase less tickets (ie tens or hundreds of thousands, far more achievable without raising suspicions), have less investment, and make additional profit on the higher value prizes that you may win (at much better odds than a 1 ticket punter). It is all down to statistics and probability - you can break-even with enough effort, and with some luck get the big one. Simon Blakely ---
**Author:** ![manwithaplan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@manwithaplan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manwithaplan)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/14 "2003-06-16T10:42:04Z")
This was done in Ireland about ten years ago. At the time, there was only 36 numbers in the lottery, making almost 2 million combinations of six numbers. You got two combinations on a £1 ticket, so you could cover all combinations for £1 million. One bank holiday weekend, the jackpot was about £2 million but the real clincher was that a holiday promotion was running, paying a guaranteed £100 for successfully selecting four numbers (someone else do the maths). A syndicate managed to hit about 90% of the numbers before the lottery company realised what was up and closed down the points of sale. The syndicate won but IIRC shared the jackpot with one other winner. They also obviously hit 90% of the four and five number prizes, boosting their winnings substantially. The taxman was after them because it was argued that this was a business venture rather than a game of chance and that their winnings were taxable. I’m not sure what the outcome was. Shortly afterwards, the number of combinations was increased (I think there’s now 48 numbers) and guaranteed prizes outside of the pool no longer take place. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/15 "2003-06-16T12:37:07Z")
I think the important thing to remember is that the advertised value of a lottery jackpot is a future value (FV) and you need to think in terms of net present value (NPV), which is the current value of your future multimillion dollar jackpot, less taxes. Interesting point by **Simon** and **Alereon** , though, so it’s possible that if the total cost of all combinations was $80 million, then you could possibly bet that and be covered by a $160 million jackpot. Note that **Whack-a-Mole** ’s supposition that you’re $80 million would increase the jackpot by that amounts is obviously incorrect. I don’t know (and not even sure it’s standard) how much of every dollar gets paid back in the overall jackpot. Almost certainly less than 25%, and then you’d need to NPV that as well. ---
**Author:** ![TaxGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@TaxGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TaxGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/16 "2003-06-16T14:44:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Alereon \* > \*\*You’re allowed to deduct the costs of all the losing tickets from your taxes as gambling losses, aren’t you? \*\* You can deduct gambling losses only up to your winnings, but you can’t deduct net losses. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/17 "2003-06-16T15:28:50Z")
Here’s a follow up question: As a real world example: The Mega-Millions multi-state lottery. There are 52 number **plus** a ‘mega ball’ number from 1-52. So I see the odds as 52_52_51_50_49\*48 or 1 in 16,217,510,400 (the total number of possible combinations) 16.2 BILLION Where, then, do they justify saying the odds of winning the grand prize of 1:135,145,920? Source: [http://www.valottery.com/megamillions/howtoplay.asp](http://www.valottery.com/megamillions/howtoplay.asp) Theoretically you’d need to drop 16 Billion to guarantee winning. And that ain’t cost effective in my book. Any math whiz’s feel like helping? ---
**Author:** ![Ottoerotic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/6de8d8/32.png) [@Ottoerotic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ottoerotic)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/18 "2003-06-16T15:45:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ataraxy22 \* > \*\*Where is the 53 coming from otto? Most of the lotteries I see don’t go quite so high. Course, I don’t really pay much attention to them–taxes on the innumerate mean less I have to pay! \*\* They just redid the rules for powerball not to long ago, and in the update, they increased the number of regular balls, and i believe they decreased the number of “Powerballs” [http://www.wilottery.com/onlinegames/powerballinfo.asp](http://www.wilottery.com/onlinegames/powerballinfo.asp) ---
**Author:** ![manwithaplan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@manwithaplan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manwithaplan)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/19 "2003-06-16T15:50:50Z")
The correct formula is 52_51_50_49_48\*52 * * * 5_4_3\*2 Which is 1 in 135,145,920. You’re not accounting for the fact that you have five chances to hit the first ball, four for the second etc. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136/20 "2003-06-16T15:53:29Z")
Flag on the play. My windows calculator gives me the same answer when I do it your way: The only differences in the two formulae you and I outlined is that I put the second ‘52’ first and you put it last. Feel free to correct me. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lottery-question/182136.md?page=2)