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Powerball jackpot at $400 million - Oops! $1.5 billion - $40 mil

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michal1980 said:
time to buy every number ;-)
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I thought about this. It only works if there is only one winner.


Edit: I also thought of another option the states could offer to vacuum up more sucker bets provide more options to players. For $10/pop they could offer exclusive use of a number so no jackpot sharing. It would require a real-time ticket registry but for the extra income it would likely generate, probably worth it to the states.
 
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which reminds me...a large part of China's ongoing market collapse is due to banks actually loaning out Chinabucks or wans or whatever they are called for stock purchases.


....loans for purchasing stocks.

Holy shit. what a fucked country.
 
zinfamous said:
which reminds me...a large part of China's ongoing market collapse is due to banks actually loaning out Chinabucks or wans or whatever they are called for stock purchases.


....loans for purchasing stocks.

Holy shit. what a fucked country.
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Good thing we never do that here. 🙄:whiste::sneaky:
 
IronWing said:
I thought about this. It only works if there is only one winner.


Edit: I also thought of another option the states could offer to vacuum up more sucker bets provide more options to players. For $10/pop they could offer exclusive use of a number so no jackpot sharing. It would require a real-time ticket registry but for the extra income it would likely generate, probably worth it to the states.
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I know, you'd also win another 25 million form getting 5 numbers correct (without the powerball)

and some trivial money past that.

I also don't know if its possible to actually do, is there a button on the machine that says buy all? or do you have to physically fill out a sheet with each number, that would probably make it physically impossible.
 
I never play these things, but all the hype and what not I might considering buy a few tickets just for keks. Somebody has to win at some point...
 
michal1980 said:
I know, you'd also win another 25 million form getting 5 numbers correct (without the powerball)

and some trivial money past that.

I also don't know if its possible to actually do, is there a button on the machine that says buy all? or do you have to physically fill out a sheet with each number, that would probably make it physically impossible.
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You'd have to manually buy them all, which would be impossible.
 
michal1980 said:
time to buy every number ;-)
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IronWing said:
I thought about this. It only works if there is only one winner.
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I heard stories about people doing this with the smaller state lotteries years ago. Somebody calculated how impossible it was to do it on these large lotteries though, just to put the odds in perspective.

EX: To buy every number, you'd have to manually fill out the cards for 292,201,338 combinations... which would take over 55 1/2 years if you're filling in one bubble per second with no breaks.

I think they also decided that the amount of paper and ink required to print out that many tickets is more than a busy place prints out in a whole year.
 
they should have a special "buy all" option to buy all combinations as a special ticket for the full/correct price matching the total possibilities.
 
IronWing said:
I thought about this. It only works if there is only one winner.
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Even then it doesn't work really.

Tickets are $2 each I think (never played, so not sure but that's what I have been told). It would cost around 584 million to buy every combination. According to the Powerball site, the cash payout on 1.3 billion is right around 800 million. Take 50% for taxes leaves you just over 400 million left. You would have lost over 100 million when all is said and done.

Perhaps taking the yearly payouts would result in a net gain.
 
DaveStall said:
Even then it doesn't work really.

Tickets are $2 each I think (never played, so not sure but that's what I have been told). It would cost around 584 million to buy every combination. According to the Powerball site, the cash payout on 1.3 billion is right around 800 million. Take 50% for taxes leaves you just over 400 million left. You would have lost over 100 million when all is said and done.

Perhaps taking the yearly payouts would result in a net gain.
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Once you factor the opportunity cost up front and inflation later, it probably wouldn't.
 
I want to say late 80's, Ohio' state lottery was high, some millionaire from Australia came in and tried to buy like $2 million in tickets. They had several machines pumping out tickets as fast as they could for 3 or 4 days. IIRC, two machines died. He didn't even get the amount of tickets he wanted by the deadline.

Keep in mind the odds back then were WAY better than this multi-state mega/power ball crap.

And he didn't win anyways.
 
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