First, I am virtually certain that I am not going to win but I believe I can significantly improve my chances with a fairly minimal outlay of cash.
My plan: I will buy 42 Powerball tickets, choosing every possible powerball once, 1 through 42, thereby guaranteeing that I will match the powerball on one ticket. The other 5 numbers on each ticket will be chosen at random by the lottery computer.
By doing this I have eliminated the powerball as a factor, and my chances of winning the whole shebang are the same as matching 5 out of 5 numbers, which is approximately 1.9 million to one, much better than the normal 80 million to one.
I realize that it is still a sucker bet, but is my theory correct? I know there are a lot of probability gurus on the board, are there problems with this plan?
I’m assuming what you’re talking about is an attempt to end up with six matching numbers, in which case your theory isn’t correct. Not only do you need to get the matching five out of five, but you also need to have those five match the correct first number. The odds of that happening are 1 in 42, which brings your overall odds back up. All you’ve done is increased your odds from 1 in 80 million (if that number is correct) to 42 in 80 million.
I’m not sure if I explained it as well as I hoped to.
In order to win the $300 million Powerball jackpot, you must match 5 of 5 numbers and match a separate number known as the powerball. The odds of doing this are approximately 80 million to one.
The odds of matching 5 of 5 without matching the powerball are approximately 1.9 million to one.
My brain then tells me that if I buy every possible powerball number (1-42), my odds of winning the jackpot are the same as matching 5 out of 5, because I have eliminated the powerball as a factor.
Not to burst your bubble or anything, but you bought 42 tickets and reduced the odds of winning down by a factor of 42.
The odds up front for one ticket are 80 million.
80 million divided by 40 tickets is 1.9 mill.
Sure, whenever you buy mulitple tickets, it would be nice, for odds sake, if they could be different from each other somehow. You just made sure that happens.
Unfortunately, there are people spending thousands of dollars on tickets, getting many unique combos for themsleves in the process (by mere chance) and they have odds more like 100,000 to one.
I humbly submit my 100% guaranteed method to win the Powerball jackpot.
The method is very simple, and has already been tested in practice, and it works. Just buy one of EVERY possible ticket. Someone tried this, IIRC they had to fill out and purchase $12 million worth of tickets. Obviously this took dozens of people, working all day purchasing tickets.
Pros: you not only win the jackpot, you win ALL the other prizes.
Cons: Almost impossible to execute, some states have deliberately slowed down the ticket machines to prevent this scheme.
Nothing preventing someone else from picking the same numbers and you split the jackpot (make sure the jackpot is over $12m or whatever you spent).
Um, for the record, assuming 49 million tickets to be bought to ensure a winning ticket, it would take 136 hours for 100 machines pumping out a ticket a second to generate all the numbers. And as the Powerball lotto is twice a week, this doesn’t give you enough time. And 1/second is a bit of a stretch.
I’ve “heard tales” of people doing this, too. IIRC, they did this with state lotteries which had better odds than powerball. Powerball has 49 regular + 1 powerball. It’s obviously much easier to fill out all those slips if there’s only 40 different numbers.
And yes, you are guaranteed to win one of every prize combo. But that doesn’t mean that someone else won’t split the top prize with you. And if they do… oops.
Your math is correct, but it’s the same bet. You’re 42 times likelier to win, but since you’re spending 42 times as much money, you’re no better off; you now stand to lose more in exact proportion to the odds you will win more.
Unless you actually cheat, your odds in a lottery are always the same.
I see. It’s simple math. It doesn’t matter that I’m picking each powerball, just buying 42 tickets improves my odds to 1 in 1.9 million. Oh well, I didn’t want to blow 42 bucks on a sucker bet anyway.
they payoff is not $300M. As a lump sum (after federal tax) you end up with slightly more then 35% of the jackpot. If you take the 25 annual payments you get the total amount, but the current value of those payments are not really $300M.
I play when then pot gets big enough just so I can have the dream of walking into work, standing on my bosses desk, bending over & saying “Kiss it good-bye, you won’t be seeing it again!”
Years ago (1980s?) an Aussie group tried to buy every combo for some state lottery. I’m fuzzy on the facts - but, as I remember it, at the time they needed $8M to buy every possible ticket. They payoff, over 20 years, would have made it a better-then-average return. They had a team of folks at a bunch of locations but ran out of time so didn’t get all 8 million tickets. It also occured to them that if some rube happened to hit the right numbers on their dollar bet the group was screwed anyway. I seem to remember they did hit the only winner but decided it wasn’t such a bright idea. In order to make this type of thing more difficult (and to increase the appearent size of the payoff)rules where changed to increase the odds of winning
