Powerball selling 100,000 tickets per minute

Here's a simplified version if how it works when all combinations are chosen randomly. After selling about 17.5 million tickets 10% of the combinations have been covered. That means that 10% of the next few million tickets can be expected to repeat combinations that have already been sold. After 20% of the combinations have been sold we should expect that 20% of the next few million will be duplicates. And so on. If sales are high enough that 90% of combinations have been sold  we should expect that only 10% of the next few million tickets will be unplayed combinations. When 95% are sold only 1 in 20 will use a new combination. That means that selling the last 5% of combinations would require selling 175 million tickets.

Since a lot of combinations aren't chosen randomly, it takes even more sales to cover a given percentage of the combinations. People play favorite numbers that are often calendar numbers, and they play patterns on the betslips. As a very rough guess I'd bet that a typical drawing that sells 15 million tickets uses no more than 12 or 13 million combinations.

If the jackpot gets bumped up again to 600 million it will mean that MUSL is expecting to sell about 275 million tickets. That should use about 85% of the combinations, giving us about a 1 in 6 chance of a rollover. If it does roll we can probably expect sales to use 90% or more of the combinations, but even if it jumps $500 million there will be plenty of combinations that don't get used, and a slight chance of yet another rollover.

Hi LP members have an idea to come up with a winning Power ball number post the last digit or two digits of your member number on your post.Every 7 post will be a number to play, My number is 30 never can tell we may come up with the winning numbers.                                                                                                                                                      Good luck to all on the Power Ball !               #30 

Thats a lot of tickets being sold, had a nice line at the gas station.

Maybe we have too many gas stations... Or places that sell tix here, but I've never waited in a line for ppl getting any lottery tickets... Not that I'm complaining, but could be interesting!!

Madre de Dios!

Someone won the MM Jackpot tonight.

With MM back at 12m there is no real competitor out there.

PB stands alone in Amercia as the Big Wig.

Sales will hit Pluto!

Where'd u get that info? Isn't showing on mm website or usamega.... Not doubting u... Just curious!!!

Where'd u get that info? Isn't showing on mm website or usamega.... Not doubting u... Just curious!!!

It is on usamega.com posted at 1:12 AM

"1:12 am – Mega Millions Jackpot Winner!  There was one $49 million jackpot winner from Georgia in the Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Mega Millions drawing."

It wasn't at the time.. took about 30-40 mins later to be posted

Madre de Dios!

Someone won the MM Jackpot tonight.

With MM back at 12m there is no real competitor out there.

PB stands alone in Amercia as the Big Wig.

Sales will hit Pluto!