Powerball lottery jackpot reaches $250 millionPrevious TopicNext Topic

If you predicted the PowerBall or MegaMillions would not be won every drawing, you would be right 90% of the time regardless of the jackpot amount. 

The odds of someone hitting last night's jackpot was about 33%.  That is the coverage of all possible combinations (146.1M). 

The odds for Wednesday's drawing will be around 45-48%, depending on the amount of ticket sales.

Does anybody know what the Powerball sales were for last night's drawing?  I am guessing about $60M or so.

The odds of someone hitting last night's jackpot was about 33%.  That is the coverage of all possible combinations (146.1M). 

WOW only 33%!  No wonder the rich don't play the lottery.

The odds for Wednesday's drawing will be around 45-48%, depending on the amount of ticket sales.

Are those real numbers - 46-48% some one will win?  Math is not my forte.  With the snow, I can't get to PA today, so I guess I'll make a bet through PTS.  Hummm, EuroMillion is at $31-32 million.  Might get a couple of those also.  Maybe it will be a good luck snow!

Yo WW!

That includes everyone in my lottery club, not me personally.

Yes, I do gamble otherwise...I go to Tunica about four times a year on the junkets to play blackjack and Caribbean Stud.

I am Male.

You were right about that roll...not sure how long that will last though. I think it will hit Wednesday. What do you think?

Somebody predicted it would roll and it did.  My gut was wrong this time. Do you think this PB will roll until it becomes the biggest ever?

As an approximation, the numbers aren't bad, but they're a bit high. The cash increased by about $20 million for the last draw, so with 30% of sales going to the jackpot there should have been about 67 million tickets sold. If there were no duplicate tickets and everything else was random, then 67 million tickets out of 146 million combinations would mean there was about a 46% chance of a winner. For this draw they're expecting to sell about 83 million tickets, which would mean about a 52% chance of a winner.

Of course there are duplicate tickets and not all numbers are picked randomly, so the actual probability of a winner will be lower. Even if all people picked their numbers randomly, once 25% of the combinations are picked 1 of every 4 tickets sold can be expected to be a duplicate for one that has previously been sold. When 33% have been picked it increases to 1 of 3 tickets sold. If I remembered more calculus I'd tell you exactly how many combinations would be used by 83 million random combinations. Without the calculus I'll call it 60 million and be close enough. Even if a billion tickets were sold there would be a lot of combinations that didn't get picked, so there would still be less than a 100% chance of a winner. Because not everybody picks their numbers randomly we can also expect 10,000 people who start with 1 then drop a row and fill in the 2nd box, then drop another row and fill in the 3rd box, and so on, picking the diagonal from upper left towards lower right. There are also 9,800 that do the same thing starting from the upper right. I don't know if all states use the same grid, so maybe not all of those people end up with the same numbers, but I'm not simply picking the 10,000 and 9800 out of thin air. Many years ago the NY lottery ran newspaper ads telling people to stop doing it, because about 20,000 people were doing it, and that was with perhaps a million tickest sold for a typical draw. If those numbers win, even with $1450 million cash to share, only some of the old winners will have enough to retire. Of course, several of the younger winners will tell their bosses what they really think of them before finding out that they can't afford to retire. It's a safe bet that there will also be thousands who play the numbers from their fortune cookie, but those who paid attention know that can result in over 100 people playing the same combination, so 100,000 people playing fortune cookie numbers may only use 1000 combinations. When it's all finished, 83 million tickets might use about 55 million of the 146 million combinations. That means that perhaps 38% of the possible combinations will be played, and 62% won't be played.

If the random numbers that are drawn look random and have a random distribution then there's about a 38% probability of a winner, and a slight chance of multiple winners. If the winning numbers have anything that resembles a pattern, or otherwise matches with peoples' methods for picking non-random combinations then there' s a higher chance of a winner and probably multiple winners.

Going with basic probability, I'm calling for another rollover to an advertised jackpot of 360. Being optimistic I'm planning for actual sales pushing it to 362 with another rollover(about a 30% chance) to the 387 I predicted in an earlier post.

It will have to roll past 370 to be the biggest Powerball prize and a bit more than 380 to beat the recent Megamillions prize. Jack Whittaker's+/- 180 million pre-tax cash is the most that Powerball has ever paid, and at the current rate 180 in cash will result in an advertsised annuity of about 371.

If it rolls it should hit 365 (the cap). Actual sales would push it to around 370-375 so a small prize increase to those hitting 5 + 0. If it rolls than it would easily hit 390 (again the cap) with a much larger bonus to those hitting 5 + 0. There is no point in playing powerplay if it hits 390 since the added bonus would already be very large.

so do you think a quick pick will win it or someone choosing their own numbers?

An extra $200,000 to $800,000 is worth playing for anyday!

hi neighbor

wizeguy - where are you located?

Hi "DD".........2/13/2006

lololololol.....lovin it.....lololol

You know w/all the spy systems, and hackers out here today, all I need to do is promise any one of them to go in for ."half the account"....even .10cents....and your account number  is mine......lolololol.......

After all, I'm your "little buddy".....lololol

(BTW)....What happened on Saturday night "DD"....I thought you already purchased the winning numbers??.....what, you mean no party??......

"CPS".

......After seeing the results of Saturday nights drawing, I guess you're right about the odds, but I would love to read that eventually you and the guys won the BIG PRIZE.....really I would....You are apparently a very nice person, a true gambling man....lololol.....(just teasing)...but someone who in my opinion deserves to win.......

(BTW)  All that rain and sleet turned to Snow, can you believe that????? So, I never purchased any POWERBALL TICKETS.....I guess it's just as well.......Now, I'll work on my number series again, as $$$$$300,00000000 looks quite inviting......

2/13/2006