"PB with its posted odds and payouts expect to only payout $34,112,290 in smaller prizes when it sells 195,249,054 chances to win its jackpot which is only 17.5% of the money spent on those tickets. Unless a regular and consistent player wins the jackpot, he should never expect to recover more than 20% of the money he spends on tickets."
Thanks RJ!
All PB states lottery websites tell you as much when they say the state keeps 50% of sales for themselves, contribute 32% of sales toward the jackpot and pay other prizes and commissions with the rest. It just doesn't register until those percentages are represented by real dollars. But it's still entertaining to play and challenging to strategize how best to win if you pick your own numbers.
* you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones *
Kentucky United States
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Quote: Originally posted by jimmy4164 on Jan 18, 2011
After a few thousand Powerball ticket purchases, it makes very little difference how you made your selections. The various subsets mentioned above will fair just as well as any. However, the bottom line is spelled out pretty clearly today in RJOh's post in the Mathematics Forum.
"PB with its posted odds and payouts expect to only payout $34,112,290 in smaller prizes when it sells 195,249,054 chances to win its jackpot which is only 17.5% of the money spent on those tickets. Unless a regular and consistent player wins the jackpot, he should never expect to recover more than 20% of the money he spends on tickets."
Thanks RJ!
All I'm trying to do is make people aware that they cannot view the lottery as a means to earn a living. Increasing your weekly outlay for the Powerball from $25 to $50 will double your chances of winning the Jackpot, which means you will be likely to hit the Jackpot ONCE in 75,000 YEARS, rather than having to possibly wait 150,000 YEARS to win one buying only 25 tickets per week! However, if you're a struggling breadwinner on unemployment, this $25 per week difference could make or break you when your food or utility bills come due.
These daunting odds don't preclude someone winning a small (or large) fortune after only buying a few tickets, and of course, this is what we all hope for!
--Jimmy4164
"All I'm trying to do is make people aware that they cannot view the lottery as a means to earn a living."
I've probably been the most critical and most vocal about your statistics and that's because I know lottery players and how they wager. People playing a couple bucks on a pick-3 number aren't doing it to make a living. The same is true for MM and PB; they know the odds are extremely high against them winning a life changing jackpot, but they also know a couple a bucks a week isn't going break them either.
I don't think I'd be too far off by saying 99% of all MM and PB players will never hit the jackpot but that doesn't stop them from playing. There will always be people that just spend over their heads and that's why most state lotteries have the 1-800-Gambler phone number on their websites for compulsive gamblers.
"However, if you're a struggling breadwinner on unemployment, this $25 per week difference could make or break you when your food or utility bills come due."
While good information, it's probably falling on deaf ears. The second story in the current Lottery News forum is "S.C. man facing foreclosure wins lottery". There are several stories like that on LP and in many of the State lottery websites. Somebody down to their last two bucks might wager one of them on pick-3 hoping to win a couple hundred.
Many states now offer lotteries, casinos, race tracks, and Bingo and almost every state has one form or gambling or another. It's already here and people are going to gamble. You're way too late if you're on a anti-gambling crusade.
The thing I don't understand is after all this talk about problem gambling, why did you assume a group of people would all wager $3168 on two draws a week for a year even for statistics?
You basically did the same thing when you assumed someone would play all the combinations on a pick-3 Tic Tac Toe workout every day. Nobody plays either way and that's why I called your statistics useless information.
United States
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March 30, 2005
2,171 Posts
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Quote: Originally posted by jimmy4164 on Jan 18, 2011
After a few thousand Powerball ticket purchases, it makes very little difference how you made your selections. The various subsets mentioned above will fair just as well as any. However, the bottom line is spelled out pretty clearly today in RJOh's post in the Mathematics Forum.
"PB with its posted odds and payouts expect to only payout $34,112,290 in smaller prizes when it sells 195,249,054 chances to win its jackpot which is only 17.5% of the money spent on those tickets. Unless a regular and consistent player wins the jackpot, he should never expect to recover more than 20% of the money he spends on tickets."
Thanks RJ!
All I'm trying to do is make people aware that they cannot view the lottery as a means to earn a living. Increasing your weekly outlay for the Powerball from $25 to $50 will double your chances of winning the Jackpot, which means you will be likely to hit the Jackpot ONCE in 75,000 YEARS, rather than having to possibly wait 150,000 YEARS to win one buying only 25 tickets per week! However, if you're a struggling breadwinner on unemployment, this $25 per week difference could make or break you when your food or utility bills come due.
These daunting odds don't preclude someone winning a small (or large) fortune after only buying a few tickets, and of course, this is what we all hope for!
--Jimmy4164
"[I]t makes very little difference how you made your selections."
Well, it must make some difference, as the challenge players did better than chance... unless you're expecting them to spend this year doing worse than chance.
Earlier in this thread you were talking about "thinking in the abstract" when the logistics of playing 3,168 combos was raised, now you want to switch to applying RJOh's buying-all-the-tickets math to actual ticket purchases (which runs back into the logistics problem) to show that the average player will not turn a profit. We already knew that the game has a negative expectation to the average player. That was never in question -- what was in question was why challenge players (limited to a subset) did better than random chance would predict.
"Better", in this case, didn't mean making a profit. It meant taking a smaller loss.
In neo-conned Amerika, bank robs you. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms should be the name of a convenience store, not a govnoment agency.
mid-Ohio United States
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March 24, 2001
20,272 Posts
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Quote: Originally posted by jimmy4164 on Jan 17, 2011
Stack47,
You said, "I don't have the statistics and I'm not taking poll, but it's obvious the consensus agrees wagering $3168 four times a week for a year on the Challenges is a bad bet for a number of reasons. If you would just agree your statistics based on imaginary wagers proved what we all already knew, we could move on."
So what was it you already knew? If betting all combinations of 12 WBs and 4 PBs twice a week was such a "bad bet," how do you account for the FACT that the Challenge players did marginally BETTER during 2010 than Chance predicted? (Excluding Jackpots.)
* ROI is The Amount Won Per Dollar Spent on Tickets.
how do you account for theFACTthat the Challenge players did marginallyBETTERduring 2010 than Chance predicted?
It can be shown that when using a smaller pool of numbers, if by chance three or more of the winning numbers are in it, you're more likely to have a winning combination than if you were using the larger pool of all the numbers. One would think it would balance out over time when there are less than three winning numbers in the smaller pool with no chance of winning anything but that may not be true.
No one has ever had all 6 winning numbers in a pool of 12 WB and 4 PB but fja has combined 2 players pools several times that had all 6 winning numbers so maybe a pool of 24 WB and 8 PB is more likely to have all the winning numbers thus reducing the odds of winning the jackpot to 1:340032 when that happens. Maybe in the long run occasionally having odds of 1:340032 of winning a jackpot and none the rest of the time is better than having odds of 1:195M of winning a jackpot all the time. (Just thinking outside the box)
* you don't need to buy every combination, just the winning ones *
United States
Member #93,943
July 10, 2010
2,180 Posts
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Quote: Originally posted by Stack47 on Jan 18, 2011
"All I'm trying to do is make people aware that they cannot view the lottery as a means to earn a living."
I've probably been the most critical and most vocal about your statistics and that's because I know lottery players and how they wager. People playing a couple bucks on a pick-3 number aren't doing it to make a living. The same is true for MM and PB; they know the odds are extremely high against them winning a life changing jackpot, but they also know a couple a bucks a week isn't going break them either.
I don't think I'd be too far off by saying 99% of all MM and PB players will never hit the jackpot but that doesn't stop them from playing. There will always be people that just spend over their heads and that's why most state lotteries have the 1-800-Gambler phone number on their websites for compulsive gamblers.
"However, if you're a struggling breadwinner on unemployment, this $25 per week difference could make or break you when your food or utility bills come due."
While good information, it's probably falling on deaf ears. The second story in the current Lottery News forum is "S.C. man facing foreclosure wins lottery". There are several stories like that on LP and in many of the State lottery websites. Somebody down to their last two bucks might wager one of them on pick-3 hoping to win a couple hundred.
Many states now offer lotteries, casinos, race tracks, and Bingo and almost every state has one form or gambling or another. It's already here and people are going to gamble. You're way too late if you're on a anti-gambling crusade.
The thing I don't understand is after all this talk about problem gambling, why did you assume a group of people would all wager $3168 on two draws a week for a year even for statistics?
You basically did the same thing when you assumed someone would play all the combinations on a pick-3 Tic Tac Toe workout every day. Nobody plays either way and that's why I called your statistics useless information.
"The thing I don't understand is after all this talk about problem gambling, why did you assume a group of people would all wager $3168 on two draws a week for a year even for statistics?"
I never did. I have repeatedly posted that my rationale for using the Powerball Challenge was to produce data from human choices rather than Random Number Generators. I also never proclaimed a desire to end gambling. I'm a gambler. What I lobby for is "Responsible" gambling. You just don't want to know these truths. And no, I'm not going to waste my time going back to find the posts I'm referring to. You ignored them the first time, you'll ignore them again. And I'm sure that if the relationship between "Expected Value" and "Return on Investment" ever sinks in, you won't want to KNOW that either.
United States
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July 10, 2010
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Quote: Originally posted by RJOh on Jan 18, 2011
how do you account for theFACTthat the Challenge players did marginallyBETTERduring 2010 than Chance predicted?
It can be shown that when using a smaller pool of numbers, if by chance three or more of the winning numbers are in it, you're more likely to have a winning combination than if you were using the larger pool of all the numbers. One would think it would balance out over time when there are less than three winning numbers in the smaller pool with no chance of winning anything but that may not be true.
No one has ever had all 6 winning numbers in a pool of 12 WB and 4 PB but fja has combined 2 players pools several times that had all 6 winning numbers so maybe a pool of 24 WB and 8 PB is more likely to have all the winning numbers thus reducing the odds of winning the jackpot to 1:340032 when that happens. Maybe in the long run occasionally having odds of 1:340032 of winning a jackpot and none the rest of the time is better than having odds of 1:195M of winning a jackpot all the time. (Just thinking outside the box)
"It can be shown that when using a smaller pool of numbers, if by chance three or more of the winning numbers are in it,"
IF!
"maybe a pool of 24 WB and 8 PB is more likely to have all the winning numbers thus reducing the odds of winning the jackpot to 1:340032 when that happens."
Of course (8*C(24,5)) tickets gives you [MANY] more chances to win than (4*C(12,5)) ticket purchases. But don't forget, those many more tickets are not free, and must be used in calculating your odds, costs, and resulting Equity IF you win.
In the end, both your tables and my tables above will come pretty close to predicting what will happen.
United States
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July 10, 2010
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Quote: Originally posted by time*treat on Jan 18, 2011
"[I]t makes very little difference how you made your selections."
Well, it must make some difference, as the challenge players did better than chance... unless you're expecting them to spend this year doing worse than chance.
Earlier in this thread you were talking about "thinking in the abstract" when the logistics of playing 3,168 combos was raised, now you want to switch to applying RJOh's buying-all-the-tickets math to actual ticket purchases (which runs back into the logistics problem) to show that the average player will not turn a profit. We already knew that the game has a negative expectation to the average player. That was never in question -- what was in question was why challenge players (limited to a subset) did better than random chance would predict.
"Better", in this case, didn't mean making a profit. It meant taking a smaller loss.
"Well, it must make some difference, as the challenge players did better than chance... unless you're expecting them to spend this year doing worse than chance."
The calculations required to determine what the statistical significance is of the deviations between the Expected and Actual values in the Powerball Challenge results are complicated, and beyond the scope of this thread. But, believe me, just eyeballing those summaries should tell you that the actual results are right in the ballpark of what was expected.
This is the aspect of human perceptions of probability that causes all the controversy. I'm getting weary of this.
"PB with its posted odds and payouts expect to only payout $34,112,290 in smaller prizes when it sells 195,249,054 chances to win its jackpot which is only 17.5% of the money spent on those tickets. Unless a regular and consistent player wins the jackpot, he should never expect to recover more than 20% of the money he spends on tickets."
Thanks RJ!
All PB states lottery websites tell you as much when they say the state keeps 50% of sales for themselves, contribute 32% of sales toward the jackpot and pay other prizes and commissions with the rest. It just doesn't register until those percentages are represented by real dollars. But it's still entertaining to play and challenging to strategize how best to win if you pick your own numbers.
"But it's still entertaining to play and challenging to strategize how best to win if you pick your own numbers."
