Powerball jackpot boosted again to $550M (could be increased again as the drawing nears)

Which means a 99.99999999999% chance that most people will lose.

Save your money.

I guess it might be a laugh to throw a buck at it.

If you don't buy a ticket you can't win.
If you buy 1 ticket you chances rise from 0 to 1 in 175M. It's an infinitesimal chance but you've increased your odds by an inifinite amount. (1/0)
If you buy 2 tickets you only increase your chances by a factor of 2.
If you buy 3 tickets you only increase your chances by a factor of 1.5.
Every additional ticket is a diminishing return.

So, only buy 1.


-OR-

buy all 175,000,000 variations. With a cash payoff of $361M that's a guaranteed profit $186M.

Anybody got $175M I can borrow?

Like 55 (56? I don't remember how many powerballs there are) $200,000 prizes (5 white balls, no powerball).

But someone else could get the #'s right too. So only if you're the only one would this be worth it.

with that kind of payout if you had the money and bought each combination, sure winner and sure profit!

... but more than being hit by a meteorite.

Allow me to take this opportunity to say how much I dislike the lottery. It lures in the most obsessive-compulsive people and inevitably ruins their finances, has them wasting hours of my time every week, blocking paying customers, getting annoyed at me for not understanding the detailed arcana of their chosen vice, and otherwise gumming up the works of a small store.

Its profit margin is so minimal that I personally am convinced that lottery-runs like these actually depress sales of retail goods. Every week, I see gambling addicts denying candy for their kids so that they can buy another scratch-off or ticket. The store owners make more off of a single pack of gum than they do from five minutes' worth of Pick 4 printouts.

During runs like this, the lotto-loons congregate so thickly that other paying customers simply start to leave their purchases behind and walk out.

And, as a Virginian, I cannot help but note that every goddamned penny of those Powerball receipts was supposed to go directly to the education budget, but they do not, and college tuition rates continue to rise as a result. So it's keeping Virginians stupid, too.

I hate to say this, but I now feel that state-sponsored gambling is bad for our society. I'm not going to try to take it away from you millions of addicts, but I'm watching your fortunes decline with much sadness.

Each ticket costs $2, so you'd need to shell out $350M. After taxes, the $361M goes down to roughly $250M. So the only thing you're guaranteed is to be out at least $100M.

If there are multiple winners, you're even more screwn.

Garbage in, garbage out

it a 'sure thing' (it is not), syndicates run by scumbags like Romney would be all up in it.

If it takes 6 seconds to fill out one lottery ticket card and scan the numbers into the computer...It will take 333 years to fill out and scan 175 million of them. By the time you finish this task, Money will not be able to solve your problems.

That would certainly speed things up, but considering it draws them randomly, you'd have no way of knowing whether or not it picked all the combinations (ie, no repeats).

In fact, the probability that it would are exceedingly small - MUCH SMALLER than the probability of you winning on a single ticket.

Interesting thought experiment, however.

Sometime ago big investors tried to do something to buy up all the tickets. There was some mechanism in place that prevented it. If they could register a lotto computer and do it all electronically, it would be simple.

550 million would only be worth half a million in today's dollars.

Headed out to buy it shortly. I'm almost certainly about to throw away two bucks, but I'll get a nice two mile round-trip walk out of it. So, not a complete waste. And I wouldn't mind winning the second or third prizes. I would be QUITE happy and satisfied, actually.

getting struck by lightning are higher, IIRC.

At 175,000,000:1 odds, it would need to hit $1B to draw my attention.

It would be funny if my one little 2.00 ticket winds up being the winner.....

I already have the winning numbers!

I do it for the fun. If I win, then YEAH...if not, it was fun to dream for a few minutes.

I actually changed a friend's behavior by telling them this, as they never thought about it.

If you are going to buy a lottery ticket, buy only one ticket.

It seems counter-intuitive to some. It feels like, "Hey, if I buy ten tickets, or twenty, then I am ten or twenty times more likely to win!!!"

Yes, this is true. So instead of 1-in-75,000,000 odds of winning, your odds are now 10-in-75,000,000 or 20-in-75,000,000.

They are still infinitesimal.

But to you, and your personal finances, there is probably a huge, huge difference between spending one dollar and spending ten, or twenty dollars.

So if you want to blow a buck, hey, why not? It's the same price as a drink in a restaurant. It helps fund scholarships. Chip in your buck.

But don't go buying dozens of tickets thinking it is helping you. It isn't.

...my approach is to see the $2.00 as the equivalent of the change I find in the couch cushions that I otherwise would never no I had.

if, instead of having one humongous prize of $500 million they would have 500 prizes of $1 million. Or 50,000 prizes of $10,000.

What can one possibly do with $360 million?

I can think of quite a few things as most people do.

There are $1M, $10K, $100, $7 and $4 ...

and the odds on all of them are completely stacked against you.

if you still keep one top prize of $500 million.

But I think (I am not a mathematician) that if you will build the game as a wider spread of prizes, eliminating the top one that the odds would improve. No?

When they doubled the price of the ticket, they doubled the sizes of the runner-up prizes.

decreased the number of possible winners. They said that would increase the number of people wanting to buy tickets.
Ahhh, no, all that did was to decrease the numbers of possible winners, making winning something in the lottery that much harder.

With a limit of $1,000,000 prize for the winner, there could be 5 big winners this time. Buy two tickets, you might win twice. 2 million.
I guess Logic can't win out over greed. Either for the people running the lottery or the people buying tickets.

Not having 360 million, I hadn't really thought about it much.

Hand me 360 million, and I'll guarantee every spare moment I have will be spent coming up with ideas.

Or is it only sold at locations?

www.powerball.com for more info.

Jeez

tax-free, I think.

I think it has been done before with lottery winnings.

Soon I will go get one myself... and one for my dad.

I'm just an under-monied asshole now.