It would have been nice to say I had a three figure hit in the largest ever US lottery. Alas, not even a PB hit in my ten games.
Would Bob Dancer Play Powerball?
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FAA
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BobDancer
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I'll be discussing this on tomorrow Gambling with an Edge radio showBob
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FAA
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Too much trouble to access GWAE. I'll wait for his forum take.
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Minn. Fatz
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Fun Powerball facts:
There are 292,201,338 possible combinations. Purchasing each one (with no Power Play) would cost $584,402,676. Since you would win $93,466,048 in non-jackpot prizes, your share of the (after-tax, cash value) jackpot would need to be at least $490,936,628 in order for you to break even. (As noted, the three-way split jackpot at an annuity value of $1.6 billion does not make the grade.)
If you bought one combination a second, it would take you over 9 years and 3 months to buy them all. In order to buy all the possible combinations between the Saturday and Wednesday drawings, you would have to buy over 845 combinations every second of every day.
The short answer to would Mr. Dancer play Powerball (other than for entertainment): no. The slightly longer answer: even with a "yuge" jackpot the enormous skew makes it very, very, very, .... very unlikely you will break even.
Discounting the top jackpot the expected value of a $2 Powerball ticket is about 32 cents. The $1 million and $50k prizes also skew significantly. Odds of winning $100 are over 5700 to 1 against; even counting the $100 prize the EV of a $2 ticket is less than 18 cents. Somewhere I heard that if everyone who came over on the Mayflower and all their descendants had played the lottery twice a week from then until now, odds are none of them would have hit the jackpot yet.
And no, that doesn't stop me from playing whenever the jackpot is big enough to make the "theoretical" EV more than the price of a ticket. Looking into why low income people tend to play the lottery, at least one study found they may feel it is more fair for them than the economic system. I'm betting they're right.
Good Mathematics everyone. Hey, it could happen.
There are 292,201,338 possible combinations. Purchasing each one (with no Power Play) would cost $584,402,676. Since you would win $93,466,048 in non-jackpot prizes, your share of the (after-tax, cash value) jackpot would need to be at least $490,936,628 in order for you to break even. (As noted, the three-way split jackpot at an annuity value of $1.6 billion does not make the grade.)
If you bought one combination a second, it would take you over 9 years and 3 months to buy them all. In order to buy all the possible combinations between the Saturday and Wednesday drawings, you would have to buy over 845 combinations every second of every day.
The short answer to would Mr. Dancer play Powerball (other than for entertainment): no. The slightly longer answer: even with a "yuge" jackpot the enormous skew makes it very, very, very, .... very unlikely you will break even.
Discounting the top jackpot the expected value of a $2 Powerball ticket is about 32 cents. The $1 million and $50k prizes also skew significantly. Odds of winning $100 are over 5700 to 1 against; even counting the $100 prize the EV of a $2 ticket is less than 18 cents. Somewhere I heard that if everyone who came over on the Mayflower and all their descendants had played the lottery twice a week from then until now, odds are none of them would have hit the jackpot yet.
And no, that doesn't stop me from playing whenever the jackpot is big enough to make the "theoretical" EV more than the price of a ticket. Looking into why low income people tend to play the lottery, at least one study found they may feel it is more fair for them than the economic system. I'm betting they're right.
Good Mathematics everyone. Hey, it could happen.
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alpax
- Video Poker Master
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Fun Powerball facts:
There are 292,201,338 possible combinations. Purchasing each one (with no Power Play) would cost $584,402,676. Since you would win $93,466,048 in non-jackpot prizes, your share of the (after-tax, cash value) jackpot would need to be at least $490,936,628 in order for you to break even. (As noted, the three-way split jackpot at an annuity value of $1.6 billion does not make the grade.)
If you bought one combination a second, it would take you over 9 years and 3 months to buy them all. In order to buy all the possible combinations between the Saturday and Wednesday drawings, you would have to buy over 845 combinations every second of every day.
The short answer to would Mr. Dancer play Powerball (other than for entertainment): no. The slightly longer answer: even with a "yuge" jackpot the enormous skew makes it very, very, very, .... very unlikely you will break even.
Discounting the top jackpot the expected value of a $2 Powerball ticket is about 32 cents. The $1 million and $50k prizes also skew significantly. Odds of winning $100 are over 5700 to 1 against; even counting the $100 prize the EV of a $2 ticket is less than 18 cents. Somewhere I heard that if everyone who came over on the Mayflower and all their descendants had played the lottery twice a week from then until now, odds are none of them would have hit the jackpot yet.
And no, that doesn't stop me from playing whenever the jackpot is big enough to make the "theoretical" EV more than the price of a ticket. Looking into why low income people tend to play the lottery, at least one study found they may feel it is more fair for them than the economic system. I'm betting they're right.
Good Mathematics everyone. Hey, it could happen.
Thanks for posting all those fun facts about Powerball (I think the same applies for Mega Millions)! I found it very intriguing. The reason I would caution at winning big jackpot is that information about the winner is revealed to the public and will lead to other life changing needs (such as changing names, deactivating traces online, moving to another state, staying away from people you know in fear of them asking for your money, and target for randoms/bribery).
For those that still want to throw money at these jackpots, the improvement of odds diminishes after 5 lines (improving down the odds by 80%).
Too much trouble to access GWAE. I'll wait for his forum take.
I've tuned into today's GWAE episode about horse racing betting. There is a brief discussion with regards to Powerball prior to talking with the guest Barry Meadow.
The short answer with regards to if Mr. Dancer would play Powerball is a "NO".
To hear the more elaborate reason directly from Mr. Dancer, skip to the 6:00 minute mark and listen for 3 to 4 minutes.
Gambling With An Edge 1-19-2016 - Barry Meadow
There are 292,201,338 possible combinations. Purchasing each one (with no Power Play) would cost $584,402,676. Since you would win $93,466,048 in non-jackpot prizes, your share of the (after-tax, cash value) jackpot would need to be at least $490,936,628 in order for you to break even. (As noted, the three-way split jackpot at an annuity value of $1.6 billion does not make the grade.)
If you bought one combination a second, it would take you over 9 years and 3 months to buy them all. In order to buy all the possible combinations between the Saturday and Wednesday drawings, you would have to buy over 845 combinations every second of every day.
The short answer to would Mr. Dancer play Powerball (other than for entertainment): no. The slightly longer answer: even with a "yuge" jackpot the enormous skew makes it very, very, very, .... very unlikely you will break even.
Discounting the top jackpot the expected value of a $2 Powerball ticket is about 32 cents. The $1 million and $50k prizes also skew significantly. Odds of winning $100 are over 5700 to 1 against; even counting the $100 prize the EV of a $2 ticket is less than 18 cents. Somewhere I heard that if everyone who came over on the Mayflower and all their descendants had played the lottery twice a week from then until now, odds are none of them would have hit the jackpot yet.
And no, that doesn't stop me from playing whenever the jackpot is big enough to make the "theoretical" EV more than the price of a ticket. Looking into why low income people tend to play the lottery, at least one study found they may feel it is more fair for them than the economic system. I'm betting they're right.
Good Mathematics everyone. Hey, it could happen.
Thanks for posting all those fun facts about Powerball (I think the same applies for Mega Millions)! I found it very intriguing. The reason I would caution at winning big jackpot is that information about the winner is revealed to the public and will lead to other life changing needs (such as changing names, deactivating traces online, moving to another state, staying away from people you know in fear of them asking for your money, and target for randoms/bribery).
For those that still want to throw money at these jackpots, the improvement of odds diminishes after 5 lines (improving down the odds by 80%).
Too much trouble to access GWAE. I'll wait for his forum take.
I've tuned into today's GWAE episode about horse racing betting. There is a brief discussion with regards to Powerball prior to talking with the guest Barry Meadow.
The short answer with regards to if Mr. Dancer would play Powerball is a "NO".
To hear the more elaborate reason directly from Mr. Dancer, skip to the 6:00 minute mark and listen for 3 to 4 minutes.
Gambling With An Edge 1-19-2016 - Barry Meadow
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