# Physically possible to cover every PowerBall number?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physically-possible-to-cover-every-powerball-number/742699>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 10, 2016, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physically-possible-to-cover-every-powerball-number/742699 "2016-01-10T17:02:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 33

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physically-possible-to-cover-every-powerball-number/742699/33 "2016-01-12T02:20:52Z")

</div>

> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Nobody says a single person can possibly do this alone using home equipment. But it’s completely trivial for any kind of organized operation run like a business.
> 
> The slips can be printed on the same kinds of high speed printers any big business uses to print tens of thousands of phone / electric / credit card bills per hour. A million credit card bills is all in an ordinary day’s work for some companies.

You have to buy the tickets in person and I think in most or all states, in cash. So you need an army of people walking around with $292 million. And you need the logistics to make sure that the tickets can be retrieved to find the winner. None of your buyers can steal cash or tickets and none can get mugged on the way to or from the lottery agent. This isn’t a trivial problem. This article suggests it’s not possible. [Could you guarantee yourself a Powerball jackpot?](http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/11/news/powerball-jackpot-win-guarantee/index.html)

Furthermore, because of the likelihood of sharing the big prize, the expected value of the ticket only climbs above $2 when the grand prize is about $1.6 billion.We’re not there yet. Finally, if it gets there, you only expect to break even but there is risk in the distribution of those outcomes… Whether you make or lose money buying every ticket depends solely on being the only winner, or at least no worse than 1 of 2. According to that article, with 440 million tickets sold, you have only a 55% chance of being the sole winner or 1 of 2. With the greater number of tickets sold this week, the odds of multiple winners (and your odds of going bust) only climb.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/physically-possible-to-cover-every-powerball-number/742699)._