Every ticket will have the same odds, 290 million to 1. Chances don’t mean squat. Chances and odds are two very different things. If you buy two tickets your odds on each ticket remains 290 to 1. If you buy 20 tickets each ticket has odds of 290 to 1. That’s why it’s silly to buy 10 or 20 tickets.
Scratch offs by the way have the best odds to win something. Power Ball and now certainly Mega Millions are for suckers.
Put very simply, ten times practically no chance is still practically no chance. But mathematically, ten times a very, very tiny chance is ten times greater than that very, very tiny chance.
I never count on winning anything at all on any lottery ticket, and in fact I have never won more than $4, and that only a few times. I buy a lottery ticket from time to time, and get at least $2 worth of enjoyment out of imagining what we’d do if we won the jackpot. I don’t think that amount of amusement would be worth $5, though.