Good Investment Or Not- Playing Every Combination

Reply #30

RJOh — Wed, 18 May 2011 23:18:37 GMT

Needing over one to two millions play slips, depending on the boards per slips, and the ways some retailer put their play-slips behind the counters and others just don't have any half the time one would have to start accumulating them a year in advance or order them directly from the state and hope they didn't change vendor before you used them. I had accumulated a nice stack of play slips when Ohio changed to G-tech and their machines couldn't read them.

Plus it takes me 25 seconds to fill... [ More ]

Reply #29

time*treat — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:25:22 GMT

You'd have to start filling them out well (weeks?) in advance, just in case the JP ever got big enough to warrant the bet.

Getting them all played in the same drawing is the harder part.

Reply #28

KY Floyd — Wed, 18 May 2011 06:41:04 GMT

With rules and frequencies of the drawings now, there would be so many people involved that no one but themselves would know about it unless they talked about it publicly

If they're successful the lottery will know about it. Selling every combination, or even 90% of them without selling an enormous number of tickets is virtually impossibe from a statistical standpoint. There's also the matter of how they would organize their bets. You don't think they're going to sort through 10 million rand... [ More ]

Reply #27

RJOh — Wed, 18 May 2011 04:32:58 GMT

When you consider companies like Microsoft and Apple which are worth billions today started out during my lifetime with less than $10K, if all someone could come up with to do with $10M+ is spend it on lottery tickets, I doubt they could handle the logistics of getting all the play slips filled out and played before the drawing.

Reply #26

duckman — Tue, 17 May 2011 23:47:08 GMT

Also consider that if someone were to bet all possible combinations on top of an existing jackpot, the jackpot would be increased by an amount equal to 50% of what he/she bet (or more or less, depending on what percentage of each ticket sale goes to the jackpot) so the bettor would get some of his/her money back with a win in addition to the jackpot amount before he/she bet the $20 million (if odds are 1 in 20,000,000).

It all comes down to the size of the jackpot and the number of winners... [ More ]

Reply #25

rdgrnr — Tue, 17 May 2011 23:24:55 GMT

Hey that's right...

So maybe I don't need counseling afterall...

It was funny!

I'm not crazy!

I'mNot Crazy!! --------

That guy was a dope and it was funny!

LMAO

Reply #24

RJOh — Tue, 17 May 2011 22:57:56 GMT

Deducing the odds were in his favor from information posted on a state lottery website was foolish since they usually only post information to encourage the buying of more tickets.

Reply #23

rdgrnr — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:34:23 GMT

You could well be right.

But I must have a twisted sense of humor.

Still makes me laugh for some reason.

I probably need counseling.

Reply #22

guesser — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:58:01 GMT

I don't think it was greed at all.

Given the same situation, I'd do the same thing, all this guy did was deduce the odds were in his favor, that's all.

Reply #21

guesser — Tue, 17 May 2011 05:56:24 GMT

There are several other instances of states selling games such as 'trucks and bucks' or 'new Harley', the problem was they had all of the trucks claimed, or all the harleys claimed, yet they still sold those game tickets under the pretense someone could win a new truck or a new Harley when they could not. They were sued, and the states lost.

Reply #20

rdgrnr — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:00:23 GMT

Good one.

And I have to admit it made me laugh a little bit.

I don't know why for sure but just picturing this guy running all over the state buying up all those tickets and winding up with bupkus just seems funny for some reason. Maybe it was the greed factor. Or maybe it was the state simply apologizing for the mistake . LMAO!

It would have been even funnier if it was a lawyer.

Reply #19

RJOh — Mon, 16 May 2011 18:23:12 GMT

$3 million profit is nice any day, but something tells me that if a person or group somehow overcame the logistics and successfully pulled it off, some rule would be changed to try to prevent a repeat.

With rules and frequencies of the drawings now, there would be so many people involved that no one but themselves would know about it unless they talked about it publicly. We assume it isn't happening now because no one has talked publicly about doing it since that Australian group did it in th... [ More ]

Reply #18

time*treat — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:56:40 GMT

From their site, they say the game is a choose 6 from 52. That's where I got that number from.

The part I missed was The player receives two sets of numbers for each $1.00 played in the Lotto game.

So... it's ~$10 million to play all ~20 million combos.

$3 million profit is nice any day, but something tells me that if a person or group somehow overcame the logistics and successfully pulled it off, some rule would be changed to try to prevent a repeat.

Reply #17

KY Floyd — Mon, 16 May 2011 05:40:59 GMT

The odds of the game are very definitely (and clearly) 1 in ~ 10 million. They don't sell half tickets, so you play two combinations on each ticket you play. That makes the cost of buying every combination just under $10.2 million.

By playing every combination you would cover every possible prize, not just the jackpot. That means that if 20 cents of each dollar is returned as non-jackpot prizes you could win back about 20% of your ticket cost in non-jackpot prizes. The 30 cents on the dollar... [ More ]

Reply #16

RJOh — Mon, 16 May 2011 05:21:59 GMT

Presently, Ohio Classic Lotto(649) has a $31.4M jackpot with a cash value of $15.7M.

If one could play all 13,986,816 possible combinations, they would not only win the jackpot but also win 260,623 other prizes worth $1,828,790. Since the payouts after each drawings have been $27,000-$31,100, I'm guessing less than 20% of the possible combinations are being sold each drawing and that's not likely to change much in the near future.

Where are the investors who want to grow their money 125.3... [ More ]

Reply #15

guesser — Mon, 16 May 2011 02:28:50 GMT

Yep - this is the one I was referring to.

Always on top of things, kudos to RJOH.

Reply #14

RJOh — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:59:35 GMT

That was done some 15-20 years ago with the Virginia lottery by an Australian business group. They made out their tickets ahead of time and hire several bonded people to try and play all their play slips in three days. They tied up three terminals at three different Seven/Eleven stores and played more than 80% of the combinations.

They got lucky and was the only jackpot winner but as a result most states changed their policies to prevent that from ever happening again that way. Now most stat... [ More ]

Reply #13

time*treat — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:29:22 GMT

Yeah, it's odds of 1 in ~20 million (buried back in the game description page), but they have 1 in ~10 million on the easy-to-find front page Lotto chart -- so that changes things. The prize has to be much higher than it currently is to make buy all combos work.

If they could make the site more useful and less playful , that would help immensely.

Reply #12

Coin Toss — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:07:53 GMT

Good point, but another reason to never assume hitting solo.

There's 20 + million combinations, not 10 + million.

So let's say someone actually played them all. Say the jackpot is 18 million or even 21 million (1 million over the possible combos).

Now let's say it's a shared jackpot, two people hit. The 21 million now gets split two ways, pre-tax.

YOU CAN ONLY WRITE OFF LOSSES UP TO YOUR WINNINGS. In other words, a person can't win $100,000 say, and say but I had $200,000 in losers .... [ More ]

Reply #11

time*treat — Fri, 13 May 2011 21:00:27 GMT

Feasibility aside, the (after tax) cash value of the 6/6 match plus all the secondary prizes (5/6, 4/6, etc.) would have to sum to greater than $10.18 million AND there would have to be only one jackpot winning ticket -- for it to be a sure-shot good investment.

As far as whether or not it should be called investment vs. gambling, far more wealth has been vaporized in traditional respectable forms of investment . Bondholders of a certain blue chip auto company know all about that. It's ALL g... [ More ]

Reply #10

guesser — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:57:00 GMT

How come nobody said:

'If it was feasible it would have already been done'.

One group tried - and hit it - by playing I think about 30% of the combos, but even they ended up losing on the deal after taxes.

Reply #9

Raven62 — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:31:06 GMT

Gambling is Not an Investment and Their are No: Sure to Win Gambling Situations

Reply #8

Todd — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:18:20 GMT

Reply #7

dr65 — Fri, 13 May 2011 12:39:51 GMT

Bad investment of time and sanity.

Reply #6

James1 — Fri, 13 May 2011 06:51:17 GMT

you could probably write most of it off with all the losing tickets

Reply #5

savagegoose — Fri, 13 May 2011 05:52:50 GMT

dont forget taxes

Reply #4

Coin Toss — Fri, 13 May 2011 04:55:55 GMT

Look at the back of your playslip.

GRAND PRIZE Six wining numbers in one game grid

Odds 1:20,358,520

Chances on a $1 play (2 grids) 1:10,179,260

___________________________________________

The second figure is for 2 grids since you get two for $1.

But even if you were up against the second figure, not the first (you're up against the first, that's how many possible combinations there are) and let's say you hit it.....what if omeone else did the same draw? Now what?

NEVER ASS... [ More ]

Reply #3

OwlCreekBridge — Fri, 13 May 2011 03:36:17 GMT

Even if you had the $10,179,260 to buy the tickets and you got past the logistics of having to buy over 10 million tickets, this would be a horrible investment.

First of all, the $18.25 Million jackpot is the 26 year installment. If you took the lump sum, it would be around half that amount. Second, you would have to pay state and federal income tax. At the end of it all, you would end up much poorer than when you started.

Reply #2

sully16 — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:28:18 GMT

I wonder how long it would take to fill out the bet slips,? to insure every combo, and how much would it cost to pay people to do that, ? to late for my brain to process this.

Reply #1

joker17 — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:21:28 GMT

If you had 10 million to spare, you probably don't need the money.

A couple of Frenchman tried this a few years ago and won, but they had a lot of resistance and I believe the laws were changed after. The problem with this is that even If you could do this, you may have to split the JP with other winners. Also, most places only allow about 10 minutes per person to use the machine. You'd need an army spread out playing at every terminal.

Good Investment Or Not- Playing Every Combination

LETMEASKYOU — Fri, 13 May 2011 00:51:12 GMT

Currently the Illinois Lotto has a jackpot at $18.25 Million. The odds based on a $1 bet are 1:10,179,260 to automatically win. Would it be a good investment to play every combination at $10,179,260 to automatically win which could be $18.25 million? And is it feasible to obtain all the tickets needed