Quote: Originally posted by prob987 on April 09, 2004
Anyone who wins the lottery beats extraordinary odds.
The ratio of numbers of people who win by quick picks and number of people who win by picking their own numbers is probably (I have no data) slightly higher than you would expect from the ratio of quick pick tickets bought to the number of people who pick their own numbers. This is because many people who pick their own numbers do a poor job of expanding the covered field size.
This is because people tend to play their birthdates and they wheel subsets of the numbers in the field. If even one number appears that is outside their wheel, they are prdvented from winning the jackpot. (They are however, under certain circumstances, deriving a certain powerplay like advantage if they win smaller prizes: There once was a winner in California, if memory serves me well who won the 1st, 2nd, a few 3rd prizes, a few 4th prizes and a few 5th prizes. Lottery officials wer astounded since they never saw such a thing, and it is unlikely they will see such an dvent again. This person was probably a wheeler of a relatively small subset of numbers. In spite of his reduced odds, his ship came in: His odds were still not zero.)
Since people who play quick picks have a poisson distribution in terms of the coverage of the field, as opposed to the other type of player, whose choices cover a narrower range, quick pick winners are over represented.
Buying quick picks, as described above, however is not the best way of maximizing your odds if you buy more than one ticket.
I've always thought wheeling was a double-edged sword - it takes a lot of money but you can win a lot even if you don't hit the jackpot. For example, if you wheeled 10 numbers and a Powerball, that would be 252 tickets and therefore cost $252. But even if you didn't get any of the 10 numbers but hit the powerball, you'd get $3 per ticket, or $752. If you got 1 white ball and the powerball, then half the tickets would be worth $4 and the other half $3, etc. If one of them did hit the jackpot, then all the other ones would still pay quite a bit as well because you would have some that met the 4 +1 criteriea, etc.
I like wheeling because I like to pick the numbers, but that's a personal preference. But it's not for everyone and it basically comes down to any other type of gambling - only bet what you can afford to lose.
plnwebguy