Stack47's Blog

Currently both huge jackpot games, PB and MM start their annuities (30 pre-tax payments over 29 years) at $20 million. Some players are complaining because both games reduced the start-up from $40 million because of lower ticket sales when sales are about the same. The MUSL probably wanted to lower both the starting jackpot amounts and the minimum increase for a couple of years and used the pandemic as a reason most players could understand.

Some players believe ticket sales began dropping because winning jackpot drawings were few and far between and most were won by a single ticket. Others say it’s because of the $2 ticket and the around 300 million to 1 chance of winning a jackpot. And because of the odds, it takes $150 million in sales to get a 25% chance of a jackpot being won. One ticket out of each 11 million tickets sold in each state should match 5 numbers, but most states don’t have enough in sales to expect a 4 + 1 winning ticket.

Because of the odds, I won’t even play until I believe there is a reasonable chance the jackpot will be won and will spend the extra buck to get PowerPlay.

Not very many financial advisers suggest getting the annuity or even purchasing one with cash winnings. And probably why most jackpot winners take the cash. It’s now “$2 for a dream” and hopefully players understand a $100 million advertised jackpot translates into about $30 million in cash after the tax smoke clears.

Saw where someone suggested people predicting be required to show the system they are using for their predictions. My first thoughts were they don’t understand predictions, the difference between a system and playing strategy, or both.

Many of the daily number games predictors use the same group of combos in every jurisdiction. Don’t see any reason to know how they arrived at those combos when some groups never change for months. Doesn’t qualify as a playing strategy when only a handful of numbers game players show a profit; 11 in the last 30 days and 10 lifetime.

The obvious difference between predicting in the forums and on the prediction board is the latter records the results. And some people just don't want anyone to see their predicting results.

IMO, a system is how you decided which number(s) to play and a strategy is how you play them. Many systems are simple digit and/or number generators some using past drawings for seeds. Using plus 1, minus 1, and same means the digits 1, 2, and 3 will always follow the digit 2. Saw one system adding plus and minus 2 and then doing the same with the vtrac digit. They finally figured out why they had 100% matches when the realized they were using all ten digits and creating all 1000 pick-3 combos.

Even using five digits in each digit position only gives a 12.5% chance of hitting and at $1 a ticket, a player is wagering $125 to win $375 on game paying $500 to $1.

Wheels are examples of playing strategies and some 2 if 5 wheels use all the numbers. The $2 a ticket PB and MM games can make playing those strategies very expensive. Some states offer “one off” number games that give 27 pick-3 plays and 81 pick-4 plays for a buck. The top prize is whatever the 50 cent straight prize pays and the other prizes use the same percentage base on the number of plays.

Just my 2 cents and see this for a better explanation.