When Do the Powerball Odds Tip?

Reply #12

KY Floyd — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 02:14:44 GMT

Your coworker may be good at math, but he's an idiot. Your chances of winning th elottery depend only on the odds of the game and how many chances you have. Losing when somebody else wins the jackpot offers absolutely no advantage over losing when the jackpot rolls. In fact, the latter is usually better, because you're left with a chance of winning a bigger prize the next time around.

Assuming a random distribution, selling 50% of combinations requires selling about 107 million tickets. Si... [ More ]

Reply #11

Stack47 — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:51:19 GMT

how can i better my odds of winning anything?.

You can guarantee winning something by playing 35 lines by using each of the bonus numbers, but that only guarantees winning $4. Betting $70 knowing you'll probably lose $66 isn't a very good bet, but as I just told Harry Caray , you can win more when you do match something by using Powerplay.

Reply #10

Stack47 — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:20:30 GMT

The over 50% point should happen when enough five number matches are sold to match at least 18 bonus numbers. The probability is there should be one five number match for every 5,153,633 tickets sold so at the very least that would require ticket sales of 92,765,394. Ticket sales reached 84.7 million on 2/11/12 and the jackpot was won, but since then the highest amount of sales in one drawing was 33 million. If you're waiting for ticket sales to reach 88 million before buying another ticket, you... [ More ]

Reply #9

Jonusl — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:57:57 GMT

LOL ,I dont play PB very much,cuz i never win,ive won in the state of mo 30 bucks one

time over the last 10 years or so,i usally when i do play,before $2 bucks,,mabe a couple tickets a week,but rarely ever even get the PB,how can i better my odds of winning anything?.wo lol buying $20-50 bucks worth of tickets.QP's? my own numbers ? i did come close one time using my own numbers had 2 of 5 # right,and was one off on 2 other white balls and 3 off on PB.

Reply #8

GetReal720 — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:42:13 GMT

But how can selling ANY number of tickets gaurantee a certain percentage of possible combo's were actually sold?

The only way I could see this happening is if by some means of a absurdly organized method people from all over the united states pool together

and assign numbers that they will manually pick so that those numbers are played for sure? Otherwise the lottery could sell one billion mega millions tickets

and still not have sold 50% of the possible combinations. They could ha... [ More ]

Reply #7

HoLeeKau — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:47:24 GMT

I don't think the number of ticket sales can ever guarantee a jp winner. Even if 350 million tickets are sold that's no guarantee. But the odds tip in favor of it being won when over 50% of the possible combos are sold.

That said, as has already been mentioned in this thread, it appears as though the PB jackpot is won most often before the odds say it is probable. So if I want to play at all, I'll have to buy tickets based on some other random event. Like when my palms itch, or when I find... [ More ]

Reply #6

Stack47 — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 03:17:51 GMT

This gives me 21,085,384,320 possible combinations.

It looks like you multiplied the number of permutations in 56 numbers (458,377,920) by the number of bonus numbers (46) to get your results. You forgot to divide that number by the number of permutations in 5 numbers (5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1) because your ticket doesn't have to match the numbers in the exact order they were drawn. Maybe some players think it's just a coincidence that every line they buy is in numerical order from low to high.... [ More ]

Reply #5

GetReal720 — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:24:40 GMT

How can 88 million, or any number of ticket sales make it so that the jackpot must be won?

The numbers are chosen randomly in the case of quick picks and I know the people who do pick their

own numbers did not take special care to make sure every single combo was covered.

I really don't know where even 88M comes into play. My best guess at this would be that you would take

56 x 55 x 54 x 53 x 52 (possible combo's for the five white balls drawn from the set of 56) x 46... [ More ]

Reply #4

HoLeeKau — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 18:36:46 GMT

Thanks, I didn't know about that site.

Reply #3

Stack47 — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:12:24 GMT

MM had three drawings when the amount of tickets sales exceeded the number of combos so all three could be considered must win jackpots. But on one of those drawings, March 27, 2012 when 191 million tickets were sold, nobody won the jackpot. The next drawing on March 30, a record 652 tickets were sold and there were three winning tickets.

When the jackpot becomes a must win , the odds of winning changes from the odds of one ticket to the number of chances to the odds of one ticket to the tota... [ More ]

Reply #2

ryanm — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 12:41:15 GMT

I don't think the PB game has sold 88 million tickets for any single drawing since it went to $2. Even at the $325 million jackpot back in February, it sold only a bit over 84 million tickets.

Reply #1

RJOh — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 06:50:47 GMT

Ticket sales for MM and PB are available at Lotto Report so you don't have to do any math.

When Do the Powerball Odds Tip?

HoLeeKau — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 01:57:51 GMT

A math whiz I used to work with told me to only buy tickets when the odds are likely that the Powerball will be won. Sure, it is won at lower amounts sometimes, but if you're playing the odds, the smart bet is to play when the odds are that the top prize is more likely to be won. At that time, half the tickets were selling when the JP was around 50 mil. But the number of balls and the price has changed several times since then.

Has anyone done the math to know at approximately what dollar lev... [ More ]