Couldnt someone buy all the different combinations of lotterey tickets and make millions more than they had?

Question

Couldnt someone buy all the different combinations of lotterey tickets and make millions more than they had?

Answer 1

The idea is that because the lotto is a cumulative jackpot, you could get a jackpot that actually exceeds the total cost of buying all combinations. Usually this is when the lotto reaches crazy amounts like 30 million plus.

A few syndicates have tried this. I think an Australian syndicate managed to win a Virginia lotto like this but I've also heard of other people buying millions of tickets and still losing.

Answer 2

If they were very lucky

Answer 3

Let's take the current powerball jackpot as an example. There are 146,107,962 possible combinations, so to be sure to hit the jackpot you would have to make that many bets. Since you could not let the computer pick your numbers you would have to fill out a betting slip entry for each combination. If you could fill out and process one combination every second (which I doubt) it would take you over 111 days just to get your bets in, but you only have three or four days between drawings.

You can, of course, get around that problem by filling out slips ahead of time and hiring a few hundred people to place bets, but that would add to your expenses.

Assuming you were able to get in bets on all the numbers, you still could not be sure of making a profit. The current estimated jackpot is $230,000,000 but that is only if you take the money paid out over many years. If you take it as a lump sum it is only $113,600,000, over $30 million less than you would have paid for tickets.

Even if you waited for the lump sum payout to exceed $146,107,962 you could not be sure of making a profit since you could not be sure you would win the entire jackpot. If just one other person had all the winning numbers you would split the jackpot, so unless the lump sum payout was over $292,215,924 you would lose money. (The lump sum payout has never been that high in the history of the lotto.)

Even if the lump sum payout was over $292,215,924 you would still lose money if more than one other person had the winning numbers.