I agree, I like the "slightly better odds" myself, which is why I'm so tempted to buy a few more tix.
But there is a lot of hype about the odds too.
Yes, 500,000 to 4 odds is mathematically the same as 125,000 to 1. But that's only on paper.
To be able to see why I say there's a lot of hype about the odds think of the drawing this way:
In the "old days" they used to put 100,000 paper lottery tickets in a huge drum, spin it around for a while to mix up the tickets, then they opened the door of the drum, and somebody reached in it and pulled out one paper lottery ticket and whomever's name was on that slip of paper was the winner of the top prize. So in that instance, the odds were 100,000 to 1. If there was going to be two top prize winners, on paper the odds would be 50,000 to 1. BUT!! All that happened was somebody reached in that drum which still had 99,999 pieces of paper in it, and pulled out one slip of paper. So to me, the odds for that second drawing were 99,999 to 1, not 50,000 to 1.
That's exactly what happens today, except a huge drum with 500,000 paper raffle tickets is no longer used. Instead a computer program selects one six digit number out of a pool of 500,000 six digit numbers. The first winning ticket can no longer win a prize, so now there are 499,999 six digit numbers remaining in the pool that could be selected, making the odds 499,999 to 1 when the second winner is "drawn". (created) G5