Is up to 363 Million now
Will ya buy a ticket fer the Long shot of winning?
Sure the odds are 170Mil to ONE , But some ones gonna win it eventually .
Im thinking about it But aint decided yet
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Is up to 363 Million now
Will ya buy a ticket fer the Long shot of winning?
Sure the odds are 170Mil to ONE , But some ones gonna win it eventually .
Im thinking about it But aint decided yet
No winner tonight. On Friday the jackpot will be worth more than 450 million dollars.
Yeah, i don't usually play, but when the jackpot is worth more than the actual odds of winning, it's worth throwing a few bucks at.
No winner again last night, so it is now officially the largest US jackpot ever, $476MM. Said there were something like 50 tickets last night that had all 5 numbers, but no one hit the correct Mega Millions number of 24.
Someone actually tried that once but they couldn't process the tickets. I don't know if that's actually true or not but that's how the story goes...
Also, you're almost guaranteeing that you'll be splitting the prize. Usually when it gets up past $300 million, there's at least one winner as so many people are playing. If you bought every combination that would mean there's probably at least two winners. You could end up losing a lot of money even with a winner.
Edit: Just noticed there wasn't a winner so it would have paid off. I don't like the odds though. Most likely you would spend $170 million on tickets and end up splitting the prize 2 or 3 ways. Just watch, I bet there are at least 2 winners on the next drawing (which means you would be splitting it 3 ways if you bought every combination).
Oh, and I don't think you get to deduct the $170 million you put into tickets. That means even with just two winners after taxes you're coming out way behind.
The cash option now is $341 million. You take out about 40% in taxes and you're still barely coming out ahead with just one winner.
One other thing to consider, you're much more likely dying in a car accident today than winning the lottery the next round. That being said, I might have to buy a ticket and hope my luck is on the lottery side rather than the dying in a fiery crash side.
Einstein Theory. Your odds of winning are lower if you don't purchase a ticket than if you buy 1 ticket but they aren't much higher if you buy 1000 tickets. I think it was something like that. So go toss a buck on a lightning strike.
$300 million wasn't enough but now that it is over $400 million I will contribute . . . and if any SF's do win, the next tailgate is on you!
I may throw a buck at it now. I figure I'm only gonna win it once, might as well win a big one!
...and if I win I'll throw the bestest tailgate ever!
...but mind the Ferrari will you?
I think most of us Know its a Loser to play. But the simple fact of it being so High now has most of us tempted.
Why not go ahead and Play when its say only 20 Mil er so.
Thats still a **** pot of money for very little investment :congratulatory:
I think Ive bought maybe 3 or 4 tickets in my life..
When the Lotto 1st started here I let em talk me into buying I think 5 of those 1 dollar scratch things Lost on every one and at that time I think every other one was a winner :unconscious:
Said To hell with it. Was at my shop one day and saw one on the ground, Picked it up and it hadnt been scratched out so I checked it
20 buck Winner so I cashed it and quit while i was a head
I'm thinking your idea of playing once its at 300 or 400 million is flawed if you think it's worth it now. I don't know for sure but it seems to make sense that is the number of people playing goes up when the money goes up, the lower your odds are? Thus your theory of it being worth it only really adds to it only being a lot more dough for who does win.
Buying lottery tickets is a fun thing to do. You can day dream for a few days that you might actually win it.
Since most players have the computer pick the numbers and more players are playing the
chances improve that the winning numbers are picked. If the odds are 170m to 1 and you
get closer to 170m sets being picked it seems logical to assume that someone is gonna get
REALLY lucky. This makes sense in my head but not sure it does on paper:playful:
I hate standing in line behind a lotto junkie at the quick trip.
Sure, your odds of being the only one with the winning number may go down with more people playing, but it still won't affect your individual odds of picking the winning numbers. I say it's foolish to play the lottery, but when the jackpot total gets above the odds of actually winning it, it does influence more people to play. while their odds may not be any better the risk/reward factor changes. Same amount of risk, but greater reward.
The estimated jackpot for Friday's drawing is $500 Million.
That's why I was talking about the Einstien Theory that your a fool to buy a bunch of tickets but if you don't have one you guarantee a loss. Plus like Pic says, if you have a ticket you at least have something to dream about. I've already figured out what I'm doing with the money, so if you see me posting from a Hawiian IP address you might figure out it was me. :D
Others sort of hinted to this but just to clarify, your odds are not dependent on the number of people who play. There is approximately one in 170 million either way.
The payout that you would expect does go down though as the more people who play increases the odds that you will share the prize.
Obviously the real danger doesn't come from those who spend $1. The people who buy $50 worth of tickets are the ones who are paying the price.
However, there is a danger for some of those who only spend a $1 at a time. They might have an unreasonable expectation of winning and make irresponsible financial decisions because of it.
I'm a mathematical guy but even I have fallen into the trap. On occasion when it got above $100 million I would go in with guys from work. A couple of times I found myself eating out on a Thursday night and I excused it because of some fantasy that I might win the lottery. I never really thought I would but I used that fantasy to justify eating out on a night I normally would not. It was a minor thing but the irrationality of it gave me pause.
I'm not really sure what having computers picking the numbers matters. I don't think the computers exclude the numbers that have already been picked. (I've always wondered if they exclude duplicates on one ticket although that would be so rare that it's probably not worth coding for it.)
I suppose that there's a chance that human's picks taken over the whole are not truly random. Humans may be inclined towards certain patters and therefore the cumulation of millions of human picks are less likely to cover as many of the possible combinations as an equal number of computer picks.
On that note, it would be interesting if the numbers from Lost came up as a winner. I'd bet a few hundred people play those numbers each drawing (which makes it a stupid move).
So playing a $1 every time they have the lotto is just as much of a shot in the dark at 20 million as it is 300 million and the idea that it's not worth it until it's up to 300 Million is pretty silly. I swear to you....I can have a pretty good time the rest of my life with 20 million as I can with 300 million.
Per CNN - Now $540 million.
I told my wife it woud be at least $600 Million before they draw tomorrow night.
The question is: what in the heck would you do with that much $?
Williesan
It happened once on the Powerball lottery when the numbers that appeared on a chinese fortune cookie came up. Apparently, the same numbers were used on a lot of cookies and people actually played them. A record number of people (110 of them) won the second-place prize in a lottery (worth a cool $100k or $500k if they paid an extra dollar when they bought the ticket).
So yeah, it could happen.
That is kind of like the old riddle (old in the sense that it was once possible but not anymore) when a mathmetician was to take his first trip in an airplane but didn't like the odds that a madman with a bomb might be on the same flight. So why did the mathmetician go ahead and fly? He calculated the odds and liked them that there would be two madmen each with a bomb on the same flight. The mathmetician took his own bomb . . .
So tonight there are news articles that are giving lotto advice. One says most people win with a Quick-pick and another says to pick your own numbers that Quick-picks are for suckers.
I've done both now. I'm in heavy at $2 now.
And anyone with a brain knows that it doesn't matter how you pick the numbers...
Unless of course you're wanting to avoid combinations that might be picked by a lot of people in which case it's probably best to let the computer pick random numbers. It wouldn't change your odds of winning but might make a slight difference on the odds of sharing the prize.
I typed up a whole response to this yesterday but it didn't show up.
I see two reasons why you would want to wait:
- You might want to limit the amount of money you spend on the lottery. If that's the case then it makes a lot of sense to wait until the payout gets really high.
- Even though it has limited utility in something like a lottery because you can't play it a billion times, people still want to maximize their expected return. At least people who understand probability and statistics tend to prefer this.
For those who do want to maximize their expected return, it would be interesting to see exactly where it maximizes. At some point the odds of having multiple winners begins to reduce the expected return. For example, even considering immediate payout and tax implications the expected return right now is > 1.0 if you don't consider the possibility of sharing the prize but is probably less than 1.0 considering the possibility of sharing the prize.
I'd bet we're beyond the point of the peak expected return.