Buy every ticket?

Reply #29

anonymous77 — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:14:43 GMT

For just entertainment purpose, I happened to calculate roughly the imaginaryamount of profit or loss which might have been resulted IF someonehad purchased all possible combinations.Jackpot 82M 1/2(1+1)Match 5 15M 41/100(41+49))2nd-9th 29M (thanks to a member for the math!)Total winnings : 126MTotal cost of buying : 146MTotal Loss : (-)20M (loss)-This way, if anyone had played all possible combinations, s/he would have... [ More ]

Reply #28

sirbrad — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:38:39 GMT

Not to mention the possibility of multiple winners, which could lead to a huge loss as well.

Reply #27

RJOh — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:28:57 GMT

The 316 drawings I was referring to only included the drawings under the 5/53+1/42 and the newest format going back to 10/09/02. You included all the PowerBall drawings going back to 04/22/92. Good information to have available.RJOh

Reply #26

Todd — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:15:10 GMT

The winning combination (7-21-43-44-49 +29) matched three on 3 different dates: 8/22/1998 07 21 22 11 49 +19 11/8/1997 07 17 21 40 49 +37 2/23/1994 07 27 40 43 44 +04 You can find this on USA Mega on the Powerball Search page.Or were you talking about 1-2-3-4-5 +6

Reply #25

RJOh — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 16:59:16 GMT

The winning combination had never matched three in the previous 316 drawings. I wonder how many combinations were in that group, such a parameter might be more realistic than covering all the combinations.

Reply #24

Bradly_60 — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 21:35:09 GMT

Yes I agree with Ryanm. The liabilty cap would not kick in. The liability cap is there in case number like 1-2-3-4-5 MB 6. They would not become paramutual if you bought all the tickets because that is exactly what they expect to payout. If you buy 146 million tickets, the lottery expects to pay out 29 million.Brad

Reply #23

ryanm — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 18:45:54 GMT

The liability cap would not kick in, because the winnings would be practically perfectly statistical for the amount of tickets bought.

Reply #22

NoCompLotto! — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 14:43:22 GMT

They would still hit for the $29+ million, but at that point, their liability cap and P-M would kick in and lower EVERYONE'S prize to no more than about half of what the normal prize would be. So, I don't see any advantage to do it at all.

Reply #21

noahproblem — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:57:17 GMT

How about this scenario: what if someone decided to go for it, and managed to get every combo covered EXCEPT ONE, and that one uncovered combo in 146 million came out

Reply #20

RJOh — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:01:29 GMT

If I had $146.2M, I could find better things than lottery tickets to spend it won. With the numbers of tickets being sold there is a good chance the cash value of $165M will be shared with other winners. I might use a week interest on such an amount to buy 1500 tickets.

Reply #19

lottottol — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 21:58:49 GMT

Thank you all for the interesting feedback. It would be nice to have the money to get every ticket, but I surely don't, and if I did I wouldn't buy every ticket because that wouldn't be fair to the other players. Time to get back to work on the number crunching in the ongoing search for the formula to predict chaos.

Reply #18

Bradly_60 — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:28:18 GMT

It is an interesting chart. If you look at the breakdown if you bought all possible combonations you would end up winning $29,292,770 not including the jackpot. So just don't count on the jackpot as a large sum of money. Really if the cash option is $140,000,000 you could break even if you won it by yourself.Brad

Reply #17

JAG331 — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:18:13 GMT

RJOh,Great chart!Don't forget the 142,116,660 ways to match 0+0

Reply #16

bellyache — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:14:51 GMT

I agree it only takes one ticket. That is why I usually only buy a couple of tickets. That, and I need to stay within a budget when playing the lottery.

Reply #15

Just6ntlc — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 17:07:15 GMT

If my dad and I were living in Oregon or Arizona right now, my dad would remind me to buy just one ticket [$1]. Besides RJOh, it only takes one ticket to win the largest jackpot in PB history. If no one wins the PB jackpot this Wednesday, then the North American jackpot record will shatter.

Reply #14

Down — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:45:18 GMT

why would you try to buy all the combinations? all it takes is one to win

Reply #13

RJOh — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:33:22 GMT

FYI of the 146,107,962 possible PB combinations the number of winning combinations are:5/5 +1 = 15/5 +0 = 414/5 +1 = 2504/5 +0 = 10,2503/5 +1 = 12,2503/5 +0 = 502,2502/5 +1 = 196,0001/5 +1 = 1,151,5000/5 +1 = 2,118,760Total winning combinations = 3,991,302

Reply #12

Bradly_60 — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:19:21 GMT

Yeah I agree....all the small amounts would be such a huge amount that it would probably work. But buying that many tickets would be a huge team effort. And a large bank roll to do it with.Brad

Reply #11

Stars — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:16:50 GMT

The only way to loose is if the jackpot was split with another person(s).Don't forget all the lower tier winnings prizes. It would be 41 second prizes worth $8.2 million plus the bonus pool money worth many millions more (you would have about 60% (you would have 41 tickets against roughly 25 other bonus pool winners)) of the pool right now, which would be much higher than the posted $13 million (you would have added more than $145 million to their sales projection).You would have over 3 million... [ More ]

Reply #10

TheGameGrl — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 03:58:17 GMT

hypersoniq- Thanks for giving a different outlook when the computer is held accountable for the random numbers. It makes it easier now when I lose based on it being a QP.Still I wish someone could formulate how many winners chose the QP option and won that way , verses those that won from picking certain numbers themselves. Or how much they spent. Ive yet to have that *moment* where I just non-chalantly go out for milk and fuel and get the *last* minute urge to plop down a few bucks on QP combos... [ More ]

Reply #9

hypersoniq — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 03:43:17 GMT

ever since swearingoff of trying to create systems and adopting a strategy similar to VisionDude's (one QP... I opt for the powerplay, not sure about vision's views on powering up), I wait in long lines to play my one ticket... feeling like charlie bucket in willy wonka's chocolate factory. only one? yes, only one... regardless of PA's october PP special (buy 5 pp tix get one free). I am far less dissapointed throwing away one losing ticket than 5 or 10. and because it's a QP,I no longer blame... [ More ]

Reply #8

ryanm — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:32:55 GMT

Yeah, trying to buy every possible combination is not a good idea, simply because of the possibility of PB selling another winning ticket.

Reply #7

RJOh — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:08:29 GMT

If the scheme worked, the cost of the tickets can be deducted from their winnings. That's true for all lottery winnings, it's just that most people spend a lot more than they ever win and can only deduct up to the amount of their winnings. If those loses don't amount to more than the standard deductions for lost then they can't deduct anything.

Reply #6

Babel — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:00:56 GMT

Taxes already negate any advantage. The jackpot would need to really grow before the scheme payed off. And with the cap on jackpots when a new record is hit it would have to roll quite a few times to get there. By then ticket sales should surpass the number of possible combinations of numbers drawn which would mean the chances of a split jackpot would be quite high.

Reply #5

RJOh — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 19:58:55 GMT

A few years ago, there was a company in Canada that had a proprietary system they claimed could cover all the mostly likely combinations with only 3% of the possible combinations. They didn't offer the system for sale but offered expensive memberships in one of their lottery pools for a series of Canadian 649 drawings . I haven't read anything about them lately so either they went out of business or they were so successful they aren't seeking new members.When I looked at the last PB winning n... [ More ]

Reply #4

hypersoniq — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 19:31:11 GMT

that will be the time that 2 or more winners come forward, thus negating the advantage.

Reply #3

RJOh — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 19:20:46 GMT

That was tried successfully a few years ago by a group in Virgina. The group preprinted their tickets, tied up 3 terminals for 3-4 days and only managed to buy 80% of 10M or so combinations. After that Virgina and other state changed the rules so no one person/group can control a terminal more than 15 minutes as a time. With that many combination, you would need more 4000 hrs of terminal time to play 2 cards per seconds with 5 combinations per cards. Some states even have a rule that the card... [ More ]

Reply #2

JAP69 — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 18:05:51 GMT

If my calculations are correct.To do one combination per minute it would take you 278 years to have all the combinations filled out give or take a few days.

Reply #1

bellyache — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 17:37:11 GMT

But it would probably be impossible to have the time to print out every combination. I'm not sure, but I swear I read that somewhere.

Buy every ticket?

lottottol — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 17:34:12 GMT

Do they have a rule saying that you can't purchase every possible ticket combination? Because right now the odds of winning are 1 in 146,107,962, so if you bought all 146,107,962 tickets for 1 dollar each, you would win $164,400,000, which is a profit of $18,292,038.