Quote: Originally posted by BobP on April 29, 2004
The only reason to buy your tickets early is the state can stop play on certain Pick-3 and Pick-4 numbers if they are over subscribed where if they won the state would have to pay out too much for the game to support.
The larger games are perfectly capable of repeating Quick Picks and if the game has 14 million combinations and during rollover 14 million Quick Picks have been sold, about a quarter to a third will be repeats and no jackpot winner would be "guaranteed".
THERE IS NO QUANITY OF QUICK PICKS YOU CAN BUY THAT WILL GUARANTEE A JACKPOT WIN ! ! !
The best strategy would be to buy a Quick Pick each time the chance to purchase one is available. If you've ever bought five dollars worth of Quick Picks at a time you'll often find the combinations very simular often containing many of the same numbers from line to line. Within a Quick Pick purchase the lines are not as random as you might think, they tend to cluster instead.
BobP
In the large jackpot games...powerball and megamillions, it is not likely they would sell out of quickpicks for any drawing. Possible number combinations are more like 120 million for pb and 135 million for mega. The 90 million pb drawing sold approx. 20-25 million tickets. Sure, number combinations will be duplicated due to the fact that 30% of players choose their own numbers which may also be sold as a quickpick. The whole point is, after there is a jackpot winner and if all quick picks were sold, they would have to start again from scratch. But they don't necessarily have to start from scratch during rollovers because more quickpicks would be available. The only time a jackpot winner is guaranteed, is when all possible number combinations have been purchased. Theoretically, the system can sell a jackpot winning ticket anytime it wants to, but it's to the lottery's benefit to have large jackpots in order to sell more tickets. I doubt that every possible number combination has ever been played for a particular drawing. I believe the lottery central computer does not put out as quick picks previous jackpot winning number combinations and other combinations for whatever the reasoning. The central computer mainly calculates numbers played per cycle until the jackpot is won. Pick 3 and Pick 4 games are operated differently than the large jackpot games due to the limited number combinations available. Someone usually wins pick 3 every drawing, whether straight or boxed.