When was the last time you saw a multi-state lottery jackpot...

Reply #21

DC81 — Sun, 27 May 2012 07:33:17 GMT

They won't even come close to MM's new record setting jackpot before they mess with the game again.

Reply #20

maximumfun — Sat, 26 May 2012 01:33:25 GMT

yikes! i got so tired of waiting for it to jump that i stopped paying attention... that is not good (for pb). that means that at least **my** interest is waning.

Reply #19

Prob988 — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:04:39 GMT

I noticed.

What's interesting is that despite all of their bigger and better hype, the jackpot is actually only equal to what the old dollar ticket produced in 9 rollovers.

The expectation value, based on averages for previous sales numbers, is roughly 0.41 on a jackpot greater than 100M annuity. That's pretty pathetic.

I played around with some numbers and discovered that to have an expectation value around 1.0, the jackpot would need to be an all time record, probably close to a billi... [ More ]

Reply #18

ryanm — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:59:22 GMT

Well, after it rolled eight times, Powerball is FINALLY out of its guaranteed jackpot range.

Reply #17

Guru101 — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:11:31 GMT

It's just ridiculous. I don't even play Powerball anymore.

Reply #16

rad242 — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:39:46 GMT

I thought it would be rolling over by 13-15m after 80m as it should be aying for itself by now. Players must be craving larger jackpots as promised especially after the 656m in the mega millions game combined with trhe fact that one has to spend twice as much to play PB.

Reply #15

maximumfun — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:35:00 GMT

Define giant. 100M is pretty giant to me, I suppose you mean what I would call stratospheric (over 250M$)? Surely they considered the lower (hopefully - from their point of view - only at the beginning) ticket sales, but that over time more people would play and just suck up the 2$ entry fee for their chance to dream the dream.

I was pretty stunned that the pot still only grew by 10M. surely by now it should be growing by 15 or 20M a rollover - shouldnt it

Reply #14

Prob988 — Sun, 20 May 2012 11:07:17 GMT

Yeah. If jackpots keep getting winners in the first 5 or 6 draws, it may prove to be less than profitable for the bottom line. The lotteries are going to have to cover the jackpots out of profits.

But we'll see. A few giant jackpots might make up for it in their minds.

Reply #13

DC81 — Sun, 20 May 2012 06:05:44 GMT

Yeah I saw.... Utterly pathetic.

So what's the next gimmick they'll try with Powerball? I'm looking for a third messing with the game within 4 years at this rate as the game keeps getting one upped by Mega Millions. I'm sure the roll overs will pick up but it's clear there's not so much excitement for PB. The only reason it's getting into this range so often (is it getting into the 100M range more often than MM?) is they're selling a lot less tickets thanks to the price increase. I know I... [ More ]

Reply #12

ryanm — Sun, 20 May 2012 04:33:02 GMT

Well, I was right and wrong about the PB jackpot finally paying for itself. On the one hand, it STILL increased by only $10 million. In fact, the jackpot amount on draw #8 is lower than the jackpot amount in draw #7 in its previous run! Very pathetic, especially since you would expect it to roll a bit faster now that Mega Millions has had two jackpots won in a relatively short amount of time, keeping its jackpots under $40 million.

On the other hand, the actual sales were ~$36.5 million fo... [ More ]

Reply #11

KY Floyd — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:55:12 GMT

The MM drawing for Tuesday 5/15 sold 19.6 million tickets and produced one winner. Do you really think that if you had bought one ticket you would have had a 1 in 19.6 million chance of winning

Reply #10

Stack47 — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:39:59 GMT

You're confusing the probability of something happening and the reality of what actually happened.

In that drawing the probable outcome was very close to the actual outcome, but that doesn't change the fact 3 tickets out of 652 million (1 out of 217 million) won the jackpot and 217 million to 1 are worse odds than 175 million to 1.

Reply #9

ryanm — Sat, 19 May 2012 15:04:36 GMT

If you estimate sales of $33 million for tonight's PB draw and the next, the jackpot should FINALLY start paying for itself after tonight's draw, assuming it is not won.

Reply #8

KY Floyd — Sat, 19 May 2012 05:55:21 GMT

I think it was a mistake to change ticket prices.

I think it was a good decision for the bottom line, and that's what it's about. The 5/16 $90 million drawing had sales of $28.536 million. The last comparable pre-increase drawing was for $91 million on 12/17, and that had sales of $28.355 million. That doesn't increase the bottom line by a meaningful amount, but they aren't losing money. Other drawings have had sales that are 10 to 15% higher than comparable pre-increase drawings. Statistica... [ More ]

Reply #7

Stack47 — Fri, 18 May 2012 15:32:50 GMT

The March 27 MM Jackpot, which had an annuity value of $363M actually had a pretax expectation value of 1.10, which was higher than the record setting expectation value of the following $640M annuity jackpot because of the Poisson probability distribution, which favored 3 winners (the number actually obtained).

The ticket sales were $652 million just for that one drawing and with 3 winning tickets the overall odds of winning the jackpot were 3 in 652 million or 1 in 217 million. And that's m... [ More ]

Reply #6

ryanm — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:24:13 GMT

Yes, as I've said before, the MUSL should dissolve Powerball and just turn Mega Millions into the old $1 Powerball by having it go to a graduated annuity and increasing the opening jackpot to $20 million with minimum increases of $5 million. Of course, Florida will have to join Mega Millions first.

Reply #5

maximumfun — Fri, 18 May 2012 05:40:25 GMT

I like the idea of expectation values.

Reply #4

Prob988 — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:48:57 GMT

Lotteries can be played any way one chooses.

Personally I play according to expectation values.

Lotteries most often do not have expectation values that approach casino games, which typically have pretax expectation values of around 0.9. However, for very large jackpots lottery expectation values can actually exceed 1.0.

I never play at Casinos by the way.

The March 27 MM Jackpot, which had an annuity value of $363M actually had a pretax expectation value of 1.10, which was higher th... [ More ]

Reply #3

RJOh — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:57:35 GMT

Lotteries aren't like casino games and can't be played the same way, buying a ticket only gets you in the game and a chance to win. Once you've brought your ticket, you've made your move and the drawing decides who or if anyone wins.

Reply #2

Editgap — Thu, 17 May 2012 22:12:58 GMT

Screw PB, match 4 numbers get $200. I have played a year now I haven't matched 3 numbers. At least most people haven't caught on yet. To win anything in this game you have to be that close to winning the jackpot just off by one number. No thanks.

Reply #1

rad242 — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:32:14 GMT

This is definitely UNPRECEDENTED! After climbing to 80m in the new game the jackpot should be paying for itself and you would expect it to rollover by 13m to 15m. This is not the case this lap though which says a lot more people are sitting with the legs crossed and wallets closed until it climbs to some obscene level before they play.

When was the last time you saw a multi-state lottery jackpot...

Prob988 — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:25:44 GMT

...roll six times and still climb by the minimum each time?

I would wager that the answer is never.

Powerball allocates 31.97555% of the sales to the jackpot in the form of the cash prize.

The last cash prize was advertised as $57.4M. It can be shown that the total sales through that jackpot actually generated $52.9M.

The lottery of course, would cover the difference from the profits, but one may question whether this $2 is really a good deal for the states it funds.

Speaking onl... [ More ]