Posted on 01/11/2016 8:39:20 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Wednesday's Powerball jackpot is on its way to an estimated $1.4 billion, after nobody matched all six numbers in Saturday night's drawing. The prize would be the biggest of all time, dwarfing the MegaMillions $656 million high-water mark of 2012. This is a big deal.
Unless you're really, really smart and lucky -- see Joan Ginther, among others -- playing the lottery is a bad idea, financially speaking. Of course there's the fun, thrilling aspect of playing, which is not to be discounted, even by a belt-and-suspenders-type publication like MONEY.
But there's actually a case to be made that in some rare instances, it's mathematically advantageous to roll the dice on some Powerball, or other lottery tickets. When a jackpot grows, it brings up the value of a ticket, which in Powerball's case costs $2. That's called the expected value, and it's found by multiplying the payout by the probability of winning.
Here's a simple example: In a basic lottery with just one prize, $1 tickets, and 100 people playing, any jackpot over $100 will mean that a ticket will be worth more than the $1 it costs. If you bought all the tickets for $100, you would win the jackpot and take home more than what you paid. So theoretically, at a certain size, a lottery ticket can actually be worth more than what you pay for it.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
The lottery is a tax on stupidity.
I have purchased $40 worth. I also got 2 free from Saturday’s play. I am considering spending $10 more. I haven’t decided. It’s stupid, I know.
It is. You are completely correct.
No different from the “fun” derived from hitting the casinos.
Every time I don’t buy a lottery ticket, I win $1.
If I don’t buy a million lottery tickets at $1 each, then I am $1 million richer.
Could be around $1.6 billion by Wednesday evening.
Ticket lines will probably be very long.
One of the laws of gambling, it’s alright to risk very little for huge life changing sums every once in a while.
I bought 1 Quick pick Power ball.
I would turn into Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack.
Why don’t you play when the jackpot is $2-3 million? Aren’t the odds “better”?
The odds of winning if you buy 1 ticket is near zero. So are the odds of winning if you buy 100 tickets, or 1 million tickets. Zero.
Turn that upside down. The odds of losing are near 100 percent no matter how many tickets you buy.
Best way to win, is not to play at all. That way, you’re guaranteed to still have your money.
The odds are no better. The lowest amount for the powerball jackpot is $40 mil. That’s when I buy 1 $2 ticket. With 1.4 billion, I have 22 tickets now and might get 5 more. Odds are the same — 1 in 300,000,000. More likely to be struck by lightening, attacked by a shark, .... any number of things. Maybe all of the above on the same day, lol.
LOL. I could have won $40 had I not bought those 20 tickets. We’ll see if I get any of it back. BUT, I could be a near billionaire Wednesday night and you have no chance at all. Okay, I have no realistic chance, but....I don’t know. It’s fun.
The percentage increase of a few lottery tickets is trivial.
Better to spend time minimizing your taxation by moving - and keep buying lotto tickets when the "prize" is > $1 Bil! with your "savings".
If you want numbers with better odds, try, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 & 12.
These combinations have as much possibility to win as any others.
I picked up my winning ticket today along with the winning Super Lotto ticket. I will do quite well on Wednesday. : )
1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55
And why shouldn't I minimize the damage by not playing a loser's game like the lottery? It's throwing money in the toilet that could be better used in so many ways. Poor people dig themselves deeper in a hole by playing stupid games, then demand government entitlements further increasing the tax load on everyone else.
Anybody care to pool $10 million to buy tickets?
I read somewhere that someone speculated that if a lottery git that big the feds would buy up the tickets in a computerized order, thus guaranteeing to win, the odds are what, 200 million to one or so?
It’s a better “investment” than not moving to a lower tax place.
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