What made you think you didn't waste your money today? Crystal Ball? BITOG Premonition?...Or you just felt like wasting money?So Mega Millions is now up to over 1 Billion Dollars.
Billion. I don't usually waste my money on any lottery.
But I bought a ticket.
Sure about the math? If you buy 302,575,350 tickets for $302,575,350 You're guarantied to win $1,000,000,000?Odds of winning is 1 in 302,575,350.
Sound economics: money not spent is money earned.Meant to go out and buy a ticket--guess I saved a couple bucks. I don't usually play, but what the heck, fun to dream for a moment.
$3 is hardly a waste of money when the potential (even if incredibly slim chance) payout is so much larger. Worst case he doesn’t stop for a coffee one day next week and recoups his entire $3.What made you think you didn't waste your money today? Crystal Ball? BITOG Premonition?...Or you just felt like wasting money?
Those sound like good odds. I'd be in for 302,575,350 tickets!Odds of winning is 1 in 302,575,350.
No, you are not guarantied, because if there are other winners of the same drawing the pot gets split.Sure about the math? If you buy 302,575,350 tickets for $302,575,350 You're guarantied to win $1,000,000,000?
Sure about the math? If you buy 302,575,350 tickets for $302,575,350 You're guarantied to win $1,000,000,000?
It's $2 / ticket. so 302,575,350 X 2 means you will might very well lose money on that transaction after taxation.Sure about the math? If you buy 302,575,350 tickets for $302,575,350 You're guarantied to win $1,000,000,000?
No, you are not guarantied, because if there are other winners of the same drawing the pot gets split.
Ok Ok, you can tell the last time I bought a lottery ticket.Also a $2 ticket.
The only problem is that it's impossible to buy 302,575,350 tickets at a time. They don't allow machine purchases, you'd have to run all the individual slips through a machine. So you'd probably have to hire a bunch of people and print out the slips in advance to go to a bunch of machines and basically just hog it for days on end. You'd get the lesser prizes too, probably a bunch of those lesser prizes like 24 of the million dollar prize 3.4 million in 10k prizes etc.Those sound like good odds. I'd be in for 302,575,350 tickets!
Yeah, but if you bought two of every ticket, that would cost you 1.2 billion and you'd still only have a 739 million cash jackpot. Although to be fair, about 60% of the purchase price goes into the pot so it would be up another 726 million, but the cash part of that would be about 537 million so just 1.276 billion. Not a very wise gamble on 1.2 billion to make 1.276 if no one else hits. Good thing you don't have 1.2 billion to try this?Another thought is if you were to buy two tickets with the same numbers you'd get 2/3 of the prize instead of 1/2 in case of a split with one other player, unless that person also did the same thing.
only...Well according to this analysis, it's only about $466 million if you do the lump sum, after state taxes for me, only $429 million.
I think I remember that. I thought it was Florida, but this happened in Virginia.That happened once a while ago, but the odds were much lower so it was actually possible for people to buy all the number combinations, once it went over a certain amount, they went out and bought thousands of tickets. Once the lottery figured it out, they shut down the game.