"Post-Game Review" - $1.58B MM Jackpot This Week

Reply #5

Wavepack — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 03:24:15 GMT

a = 302575350

((a - 350) / a) ^ 12480 = 0.9857

A 98.57% probability that you'll lose ~ 90% of ~ $25,000 lifelong ticket cost. MM and PB are mostly loser games.

Reply #4

Orange71 — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 14:12:13 GMT

Yes. I had erroneously not counted 4 + 1 as a 5 ball win.

Reply #3

Wavepack — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 23:19:32 GMT

The 25 should be larger, primarily because the 4+1 win has (5 choose 4) * (65 choose 1) = 325 combinations out of 302575350 to win. The 25 should be 325 + 25 + 1.

Reply #2

Orange71 — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 17:09:39 GMT

At least. You can fairly easily calculate conditional probabilities and EVs given the assumption that the player never hits 5 main balls (with or without Megaball) over a lifetime. Just keep the same numerators and subtract off 25 from the denominator from my posted table to get the (new) conditional probabilities for the lower tier prizes.

How likely is that 5 + 0 or 5 + 1 is never hit? Let's say a player buys 6 Quickpick tickets per week (3/drawing). The player does that for 40 years. That... [ More ]

Reply #1

Wavepack — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 14:18:07 GMT

The rule of thumb that I bother to remember is that the expected loss is about 90% for a typical MM or PB player. By typical, I mean the player will never see a 5 or 6 ball hit.

"Post-Game Review" - $1.58B MM Jackpot This Week

Orange71 — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 16:53:46 GMT

A single winner in Florida hit the $1.58B Mega Millions this week. The cash value (I saw on TV anyway) was about $783M. This begs the question: playing a regular $2 ticket, did a player have a positive return expectation (expected value of return $2 bet)?

Answers:

1. Before income tax - yes, roughly $0.11 gain per $ bet (about +11% return)

2. After income tax - no, roughly $0.28 loss per $ bet if you assume a 35% tax rate on winnings. (about -28% return)

First, I looked up the nu... [ More ]