United States
Member #119
February 19, 2002
530 Posts
Offline
People who read my posts know that I am NOT a fan of the PB or MM because of their near-impossible number fields. But I wanted to share that my gut tells me that the MM will not be won until the jackpot reaches $800 million.
Maybe I'll wait until then to play a few numbers. :-)
mid-Ohio United States
Member #9
March 24, 2001
20,272 Posts
Offline
You'll going to have a long wait because at $800M, the cash value of that jackpot would be more than twice the odds of winning. That hasn't happen since that group try to buy all the possible combinations in the Virgina lottery some years ago. If there is a way for some investment group to invest $175M for a $400M payout in 3 days, it will be done.
RJOh
* you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones *
New Jersey United States
Member #21,205
September 4, 2005
963 Posts
Offline
You'll going to have a long wait because at $800M, the cash value of that jackpot would be more than twice the odds of winning. That hasn't happen since that group try to buy all the possible combinations in the Virgina lottery some years ago. If there is a way for some investment group to invest $175M for a $400M payout in 3 days, it will be done.
RJOh
I very much doubt that such an effort would work. There are 86400 seconds in a day. This means that to cover the field, one would require a team of 46 highly organized people producing one ticket per second without stop to succeed at the effort over a three day period.
There is always a chance that someone will do a Michael Brown with the whole deal and one will lose many millions of dollars in the effort. Further, if one were to spend 175 million on the effort, the prize may well split. In that case one could end up losing a great deal of money, especially when one considers the tax implications.
When lotteries had more reasonable odds, such a thing may have been a good bet, but not under these circumstances.
That said, I am very skeptical that an $800 million dollar prize could be achieved. I think that it is possible there may be one at $500 million, but even that will be relatively rare.
There are many better ways to invest $175 million dollars and make oodles of money.