Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

[ruserl88]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

This

If you buy a lotto ticket a week that is only $52 a year. I am sure people spend quadruple that a year on things like soda when stopping at the gas station.

Are you people against the lottery or gambling in general?

i'm not against gambling / lottery , i'm just against giving money away . maybe i should start to think of the lottery as a charity , i wouldn't have any problem donating to a charity

[superjames1992]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

See in Texas youre helping the school system

LOL, here in North Carolina it's called the North Carolina EDUCATION Lottery.

I think they had to call it that or the lottery would have never been approved when they added it like 5 years ago.

see, thats your opinion... i'd argue that I get more satisfaction from buying a lottery ticket than I do from buying a soda

a soda just makes me more unhealthy (1 soda a day every day, think of all the extra sugar and calories)... a lottery ticket doesnt ruin your diet, instead it gives you that thrill, that adrenaline rush from the thought that you may win, even if it is just for a moment

I see what you mean. That is true.

[USF11]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

Like my man Bill Simmons said. The lottery is such a great invention. Another thing the government uses to make the non-elites think they have a chance to "make it."

Folks spending their hard earned money day after day HOPING to win something that might not even exist. (Has been conspiracies that nobody actually wins). I had to get my father to stop playing that game every week. His mother used to do it so he thought it was the thing to do. Waste of $.

If you want to gamble just go to the damn casino

But when you really think about it, the chances of a person making 250 million at the age of say 35 and the chance of winning on a $1 lottery ticket is about the same thing.

I see no problem with playing for $1 when it gets up to crazy levels.

[bill2451]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

not to mention, gambling is all about odds... the goal of any good gambler is to tilt the odds as far in their favor as possible, and over the long haul they will make money (if I make a 1 dollar bet where the odds are 10:1, but when I win I win 11 dollars, for every 10 dollars bet I will win 11 dollars on average)

now, purely statistically speaking, the odds of winning powerball are 1 in 195,249,054... which means when the powerball jackpot gets over $195,249,054, then the odds are actually in the players favor, which means that over an infinitely long amount of time, if you only played when the jackpot was over that, you would make money

of course, those odds are so astronomically high that this is a bit impractical, as 99.99999999999999% of the population will never live long enough to win that first time

but still, theoretically its actually a profitable gamble if you play when the jackpot gets high enough :P

[BunnyHardaway]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

Doubtful. By the time you win, you'll have probably spent more in tickets than you'll actually gain in prizes. Of course, you could get lucky, but I wouldn't say that you're going to win it for sure.

I only play Powerball, and hopefully it comes sooner than later.

[superjames1992]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

now, purely statistically speaking, the odds of winning powerball are 1 in 195,249,054... which means when the powerball jackpot gets over $195,249,054, then the odds are actually in the players favor, which means that over an infinitely long amount of time, if you only played when the jackpot was over that, you would make money

Not really because you have to pay taxes on the jackpot. Thus, you'd probably have to have the jackpot in the $300-$400 million range to make a theoretical profit.

[superjames1992]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

I found this interesting from THIS SITE:

2nd Thoughts

Government statistics show there are about 1.7 automobile caused fatalities for every 100,000,000 vehicle-miles. If you drive one mile to the store to buy your lottery ticket and then return home, you have driven two miles. Thus the probability that you will join this statistical group is 2 x 1.7 / 100,000,000 = 0.000000034. This can also be stated as “One in 29,411,765-”. Thus, if you drive to the store to buy your Powerball ticket, your chance of being killed (or killing someone else) is nearly 7 times greater than the chance that you will win the Powerball Jackpot.

Pretty wild.

[youvalss]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

Murphy's law > statistics

[peteykirch]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

A pool of me and 4 friends at work bought a bunch of tickets, almost hit for 200K + the 5x multiplier.

4 numbers still got us a little spending cash.

[Jdurg]

Re: Waiting on Powerball numbers (252 million)

A friend of mine had a good quote: "The lottery is a tax on the mathetmatically challenged".

I rarely buy lottery tickets. I only do it when if I win, I can retire right now and live off of the very simple interest you get from normal accounts. Not needing any fancy investments or whatnot.

My jackpot minimum for playing (and when I do play it's only a couple of dollars worth of tickets) is $200 million. My reasoning is that I would take the winnings as a lump sum, so that cuts the jackpot pretty much in half. Then taxes take out pretty much another half of that, so that leaves me with $50 million in my hands. The interest on that each year equates roughly to $200,000 which is something I can easily live off of. Of course, if I ever did win I'd hire an investment professional to take care of the finances for me.

The best I ever did on a lottery ticket was picking up a scratch off ticket a couple of years ago and winning $500. That was pretty nice.