Do you see PB jackpots of $300 mil plus a fluke going forward with California joining in soon?

Reply #63

KY Floyd — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:15:40 GMT

State lotteries don't expect to have 5 or more QPs with five number matches on sales of $50,000, but it's possible if the individual terminals independently randomly distribute QPs.

It's also possible that you'll win every jackpot you play for in May, but what are the chances that it will happen? The lotteries rely on probability, and probability works very reliably. Having 5 5+0 winners from sales of 50,000 tickets could happen if the winning numbers happen to match a set of numbers that so... [ More ]

Reply #62

Stack47 — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:58:22 GMT

That small percentage is actually about 20 to 30%, and as I said in my first post, many of those players don't choose their numbers randomly. That means there are more duplicate combiantions from that group than their percentage would suggest.

Having multiple duplicate self pick lines is part of doing business because that option is allowed and why two players in WVA had several $2 million winning Powerplay tickets. That is a risk in every drawing. I'm talking about expecting to have one fiv... [ More ]

Reply #61

Stack47 — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:21:37 GMT

There is a repeat button on lottery terminals and a clerk apparently accidentally hit it when I bought MM tickets and printed five identical tickets. Each ticket was valid but could not be voided so had I won the jackpot, it would be at least a five way split. Because it was an obvious error by the clerk, I was only responsible for one ticket and the others were either sold to other players or the store kept them. That was many years ago so that problem was probably fixed.

Our PB playslips ha... [ More ]

Reply #60

Stack47 — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:57:45 GMT

I believe the three tickets that shared the record $650 plus MM drawing were all QPs, but there were 652 million tickets sold so multiple winners were expected.

Reply #59

rdgrnr — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:14:18 GMT

There it is then, they can and do give out duplicate Quick Picks.

Reply #58

Original Bey — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:57:10 GMT

Cindy bought the couple's winning combination, along with four others, the night of the drawing at Trex Mart, 17605 Highway Z in Dearborn. She let the computer quick pick the combinations on her ticket. The winning numbers were: 5, 16, 22, 23, 29, and the Powerball was 6.

Reply #57

Ronnie316 — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:41:16 GMT

I know for sure the AZ PB winner on Nov. 28, 2012 was a QP, was the Missouri ticket a QP?

Wednesday, November 28, 2012 05 16 22 23 29 + 06 $587.5 Million

Reply #56

rdgrnr — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:23:22 GMT

I wonder if there's ever been valid duplicate QP lines that won a Jackpot

Reply #55

Ronnie316 — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 15:20:30 GMT

Pay out on duplicate lines will not happen if the duplicates are produced by a terminal malfunction like the ones in AZ that were discovered by a pool. Only valid duplicate lines will be paid. That's why the cookie fortune incident was investigated to ensure valid duplicates were being paid.

Reply #54

Stack47 — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 03:52:05 GMT

I believe it was 10 duplicate lines. It happened when the jackpot was really high and apparently the player bought over $100 worth of tickets. The lottery gave the odds against that happening, but still reprogrammed to make sure it didn't happen again.

The jackpot prize is divided by all the states so has no effect on individual state payoffs. The secondary prizes are paid by the individual states, some of the states have small ticket sales and duplicate QPs matching five numbers could hurt t... [ More ]

Reply #53

KY Floyd — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 22:34:12 GMT

There is always a risk of several self pick players picking the same five numbers, but at best it's only a small percentage of all ticket sales.

That small percentage is actually about 20 to 30%, and as I said in my first post, many of those players don't choose their numbers randomly. That means there are more duplicate combiantions from that group than their percentage would suggest. Because birthday numbers account for less than 5% of possible combinations, selling 70 to 80 random QP's sh... [ More ]

Reply #52

GiveFive — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:01:32 GMT

Thank you.

I agree, it's much easier to win one million dollars playing SM than playing PB. 3.8 million to 1 odds to win a million dollars is tough to find in an online one dollar per line game. I've looked at other state's lotteries websites, and I've yet see anything close to it.

The best thing I've seen has been a raffle held by The State of Connecticut. For the last two years, CT has been running a SuperDraw raffle twice per year, but it appears as if they wont be doing it this year.... [ More ]

Reply #51

Ronnie316 — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:32:58 GMT

That was an actual glitch where a number of terminals were printing duplicate tickets. (all 5 QPs the same) It may have continued to occur until someone (in this case multiple people) was denied a prize. (prizes) But someone in a pool got duplicates and alerted them so that the glitch has been fixed.

http://www.azfamily.com/news/consumer/UPDATE-Mega-Millions-Mystery--146462605.html

Reply #50

rdgrnr — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:20:49 GMT

...it does prevent duplications.

Are you saying there are no duplicate QP's given out or just no duplicates on one ticket

Reply #49

Stack47 — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:16:13 GMT

The annual report on the NY Lottery's website is more concise than most state lotteries so I couldn't find the prize winnings to ticket sales percentage. The total ticket sales of Sweet Million is $39,398,339 and the report says of that $20,104,231 went to Educational Aid. Some of the remaining $19 million probably goes to expenses so I'm guessing about 45% of the total sales is paid out in prizes.

The overall chances of winning $1 million is much better playing Sweet million than playing PB.... [ More ]

Reply #48

GiveFive — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 11:37:09 GMT

Stack47

I'm curious to know if you have any info regarding New York's Sweet Million game. Do you know what pecentage of ticket sales is paid out in prizes?

Even though it offers the best odds to win one million dollars, Sweet Million is not well received by NY's lottery playing public. The second tier prizes are low, and due to it's coverage problem not many JP's are won, which is something players react negatively to.

IMHO, the game does have it's up-side. The first 5 JP wins are not... [ More ]

Reply #47

Stack47 — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 18:46:56 GMT

Some of the terminals were reprogrammed because they issued duplicate sets of numbers and were sold to one player. It's not the same as from a master list, but it does prevent duplications.

Reply #46

Stack47 — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:16:19 GMT

The secondary prize pool was underfunded by $22 million on Wednesday including six players (one using PowerPlay) that matched five numbers. I guess MUSL is betting on extended roll overs for their profits.

Reply #45

Ronnie316 — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:25:43 GMT

I asked about QPs in a topic and this was Todd's reply (on page 1).............................

The Quick Picks are random numbers generated by the lottery terminal itself. They are not drawn from a master list of numbers until the list is exhausted.

https://www.lotterypost.com/thread/251603

Reply #44

Stack47 — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 16:14:07 GMT

Because if they only sell 56,000 tickets there's only about a 1 in 70 chance of having even a single winner.

The odds you're giving are based on the number of total combinations. I wasn't talking about a single winner, but programing their QP RNG to insure there won't be multiple winners. There is always a risk of several self pick players picking the same five numbers, but at best it's only a small percentage of all ticket sales. If each QP is a unique set of five numbers out of every 3,904... [ More ]

Reply #43

ryanm — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 05:22:37 GMT

Correct, KYFloyd. It doesn't matter that most states don't sell enough tickets to fully fund even one $250,000 prize, because if they don't have any match 5+0 winners, they hold the funds for that prize level anyway for future draws where they DO need the funds to pay a winner. Same with the other set prize levels.

Reply #42

KY Floyd — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 04:36:14 GMT

why were there only three jackpot winners when 652 million tickets were sold for the March 30, 2012 MM drawing and why don't we see very many jackpots with multiple winners?

Um, maybe it's because The more tickets they sell the more repeats there are. ? Most drawings don't sell all that many tickets, so there aren't very many duplicates, so if it doesn't roll there's usually only one winner. For the $656 million MM jackpot there were far more tickets sold, so there were a lot more duplicates... [ More ]

Reply #41

Stack47 — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 02:16:34 GMT

What about the Virgin Islands, their ticket sales were barely enough to cover a pick-4 straight win

Reply #40

ryanm — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:47:17 GMT

Oh yeah. It seemed like PB could go broke back in December, when it paid four $50 million jackpots in a row. Those were underfunded by a total of $59 million. PB is REALLY taking a gamble with its $40 million opening jackpot and $10 million minimum increases.

Reply #39

JKING — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 04:37:01 GMT

The flipside is that with California in the mix, there will be more combinations picked on every draw. Therefore, the jackpot should be won more often.

Reply #38

GiveFive — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 02:04:56 GMT

Thanks for an excellent response!

There certainly is a lot to the lottery biz, isnt there? As a casual player, (a buyer of tickets) I never gave much thought to the sell side of the equation. I doubt most players have an in depth understanding of what the states need to know and do to make it a profitable business. I guess other players are just like me, they just know if you buy a ticket, you might win a lot of money.

Besides PB and MM, I play other games with an eye towards winning 2nd

Reply #37

jjtheprince — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:22:24 GMT

Question, could MM or PB ever go completely broke since it's too easy for some to win

Reply #36

noise-gate — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:38:11 GMT

Stack- if Rhode island did not have enough to cover their bets perhaps they ought to go back to the voters or remove themselves altogether from the lottery.. At this rate, the State is bleeding Red.

Reply #35

Stack47 — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:34:54 GMT

The more tickets they sell the more repeats there are.

If that's true, why were there only three jackpot winners when 652 million tickets were sold for the March 30, 2012 MM drawing and why don't we see very many jackpots with multiple winners?

If all combinations were picked randomly, once 10% of the combinations had been played we would expect 1 in 10 tickets sold to repeat a combination that had already been used.

Why would a state like Rhode Island take a chance on having multipl... [ More ]

Reply #34

Stack47 — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:42:03 GMT

Probably the best way to determine the amount of tickets sales to realistically get over a 50% chance the jackpot will be hit is to project how many tickets should match five numbers. One ticket out of every 5,153,633 should match 5 and there are 35 bonus numbers so the odds against that one combo winning the jackpot are 35 to 1. It should take at least 18 five number matches to get over a 50% chance or about 93 million tickets.

Can't really guess how many duplicate tickets are sold but looki... [ More ]

Reply #33

Ronnie316 — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:35:22 GMT

Reply #32

Ronnie316 — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:34:43 GMT

What does it do to your logic when a selt-picker is correct, like Donald was

Reply #31

Ronnie316 — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:33:12 GMT

Yes, those stupid self-pickers wreak havoc on your logic dont they......

Reply #30

KY Floyd — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:29:30 GMT

Not to pick a nit, but is it 88 million tickets, or 88 million lines of unique 6 number combinations?

Of course. The more tickets they sell the more repeats there are. If all combinations were picked randomly, once 10% of the combinations had been played we would expect 1 in 10 tickets sold to repeat a combination that had already been used. When 20% have been used 1 in 5 would be repeats, and so on. For the first few rols, when sales are modest, it's not abig factor, but it becomes signific... [ More ]

Reply #29

jjtheprince — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:25:13 GMT

California will be irrelevant since over 90% of PB MM winners come from states east of the Mississippi River anyway.

Reply #28

ryanm — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:12:57 GMT

I think PB will still roll to only $60 million if it is not won Saturday, even with California joining. The $50 million jackpot ($31.5 million cash) won last Saturday was underfunded by $13 million.

Reply #27

GiveFive — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 09:34:07 GMT

Not to pick a nit, but is it 88 million tickets, or 88 million lines of unique 6 number combinations?

I wonder what percentage of the 81.6 million tickets sold for the $338 jackpot had duplicate lines/combinations printed on them? It seems to me that would lower the chances of the jackpot being won even further, yet it was still won.

That was good input with regard to Caifornia's payback percentage. I'd like to know New York's percentage. I would think it's fairly decent. I had no idea C... [ More ]

Reply #26

Stack47 — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:26:23 GMT

California ranks 33 in per capita lottery spending averaging $108.77 a year compared to Massachusetts that averages $860.70. The reason the Massachusetts players spend almost 8 times more each year is probably because 72% of their ticket sales are paid back in prizes and the California lottery only pays back 53% in prizes. A good example is in last nights MM drawing when five players matched 5 + 0. Four of the players will collect $250.000, but the California player will collect $201,115. The ot... [ More ]

Reply #25

rdgrnr — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:50:03 GMT

Please, anybody but Charlie Sheen.

ANYBODY

Reply #24

GiveFive — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:36:55 GMT

I think this post nailed it.

Selling more tickets for each drawing (by adding California to the mix) means greater coverage of the 175 million possible combinations of six numbers.

Another way to describe what I wrote above is, the more tickets that are sold, a larger percentage of all the possible 6 digit combinations is generated or become covered , and selling more tickets is what causes the jackpot to rise.

California is the most populated state in The U.S., so just like New York,... [ More ]

Reply #23

noise-gate — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 03:37:42 GMT

jackpots can become so huge that it would annoy people. What would be the point of having a $700 mil jackpot ( if only) and have ONE winner?

With a jackpot that size, one would think it would be won by a pool at best, then you hear its been won by Charlie Sheen or some wealthy dude who does not need the money to begin with.

Reply #22

rdgrnr — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:38:46 GMT

Yeah, it'll be harder to win and pots will get bigger which will make more people play and so on and so on and so on.

Which would suck.

Reply #21

Romancandle — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:26:57 GMT

I'm sure the bean counters got this all figured out... raise PB from $1 to $2 and then add California to the mix later... all part of the grand plan.

What effect does a matrix change have on the bottomline in terms of revenue to the states/lotteries etc.? Will they rake in more money with a matrix change

Reply #20

rdgrnr — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:23:30 GMT

Nope.

Reply #19

noise-gate — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:19:47 GMT

Lets hope so rdgrnr- they have a tendency to do whatever they think is best to their best advantage of course. Like raising the PB ticket price from $1.00 to $2.00.

Did the lottery Committee run that idea pass the playing public for their consent before implementing the idea?- if they did, l did not get the Memo, did you

Reply #18

rdgrnr — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:12:29 GMT

Me too.

Reply #17

dallascowboyfan — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:47:46 GMT

I hope they don't change the matrix

Reply #16

dallascowboyfan — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:46:30 GMT

Reply #15

RedStang — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:08:33 GMT

Cali spends the most on MM, so i can't imagine what their PB sales will be. Jackpots will be huge if no one wins.

Reply #14

haymaker — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 23:01:18 GMT

Yea, thats the way I see it.

Reply #13

JoshUK — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:31:59 GMT

Could also mean the Jackpot stays down low because of more people playing. We will have to wait and see how big of a spender Californa is.

Reply #12

joshuacloak — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 16:15:57 GMT

i think normal jackpot should be in 200s range long term

300 and above are more rare

i know pb lottery people when they changed game to 2 bucks

they was thinkin the average jackpot range would be in 200s range

as in u have a few low winners, and a few high winners, but year atfer year, around 200s

or this could happen

Wednesday, December 26, 2012 11 13 23 43 54 + 04 $50 Million

Saturday, December 22, 2012 01 18 35 39 44 + 11 $40 Million

Wednesday, Decemb... [ More ]

Reply #11

Ronnie316 — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:55:50 GMT

Nice work.

Reply #10

Ronnie316 — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:55:21 GMT

The odds are mostly irrelevant. What matters is how many people play.

Reply #9

Ronnie316 — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:52:57 GMT

We will have MUCH larger jackpots when interest rates rise.

Reply #8

noise-gate — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:48:59 GMT

Impressive research Stack .Hope it turns out the way you see it.

Reply #7

Stack47 — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:32:40 GMT

On average, the NY MM and PB players wager about the same amount on both games and can be used for a model. California's ticket sales for MM average about 2.7 million for the beginning $12 million jackpot. If their PB play is about the same so the PB sales should increase by about the same amount. PB had $56.5 million in ticket sales total when the last $50 million jackpot was won so the addition of California should lessen the losses when a $40 million jackpot is won or even show a small profit... [ More ]

Reply #6

KY Floyd — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 04:52:30 GMT

How many states offer the game is mostly irrelevant. What really matters is the odds of the game. At 175 million to 1, there will be an average of one winning ticket for every 175 million tickets sold. Selling 175 million tickets results in a cash jackpot of about $112 million, or about $180 million advertised.

Adding more players to the game will result in selling more tickets for each drawing, so the odds of a winner for the 7th, 8th, and 9th drawing of each run will be higher than in the p... [ More ]

Reply #5

dallascowboyfan — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:59:52 GMT

I think there will be larger jackpots with PB Mega Cali will add to PB increases Florida will add to Mega. Can't wait for the Frenzy

Reply #4

rdgrnr — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:59:15 GMT

The jackpots will rise larger and faster on average but will be won before reaching stratospheric levels.

Unless there is a matrix change.

Which would suck.

Reply #3

whiteballz — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:46:46 GMT

Perhaps more States joining in will make huge jackpots a thing of the past

huge jackpots will never be a thing of the past. If the jackpot keeps being won too often, the lottery officials can always change the matrix. They could go from 35 PB to 40 PB. Most casual lottery players know next to nothing about the lottery and they wouldn't notice the difference.

Reply #2

Stack47 — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:28:18 GMT

Considering that its been awhile since it got way up there on a consistent basis.

There were only two $300 million jackpots after the ticket price doubled and California will be adding to the total number of ticket sales. The $300 million jackpots should be fewer and far between when the California ticket sales are added. We should see more $100 million jackpots.

Perhaps more States joining in will make huge jackpots a thing of the past or few far between- what is your take on the matter... [ More ]

Reply #1

sully16 — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:39:53 GMT

I think we'll see the jack pot grow really big, really fast.

Do you see PB jackpots of $300 mil plus a fluke going forward with California joining in soon?

noise-gate — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 16:16:59 GMT

Considering that its been awhile since it got way up there on a consistent basis.Perhaps more States joining in will make huge jackpots a thing of the past or few far between- what is your take on the matter