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Am I the only one sick and tired of not winning the lottery?

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SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on December 28, 2011, 01:06:02 pm ---My parents were in town for the holiday and it turns out that one of their neighbours won 1/3 of the recent 250 Powerball.

--- End quote ---

---fudgesicle---....

Moving along....


--- Quote from: shmokes on December 28, 2011, 05:41:18 pm ---It really is a pretty evil institution. It is a regressive tax (i.e. poor people are taxed at a greater rate than rich people). For example, in most states that have the lottery public schools are funded primarily or exclusively through lottery proceeds rather than property taxes, as is normal pretty much everywhere else. Since only poor people are silly enough to play the lottery, that makes the public school system funded primarily, almost exclusively, by poor people. It's really horrendous. The lottery is the people's government knowing that the poor people are not sophisticated enough to know when they're being duped, and then instead of protecting them from people who would take advantage of this fact, the government takes advantage of it instead.

--- End quote ---

Which, ironically enough, California still has a hard time funding the schools. To put it succinctly, it doesn't work.

Many moons ago, I got a hold of a paper describing just how much money the school district got from the Lottery at the time. Don't ask how I got it. But to put it simply, there was enough money flowing in that each school would have a brand new computer lab nearly every year. Yet our school just barely put together one via Measure S (at the time, this was an increase on local property taxes). The true amount of Lotto money flowing down would barely buy pencils for the the individual teachers much less the students.

The entire Lotto distribution is flawed from the top down. Every time the money is divided, more and more of it goes missing towards "administration" costs. If any of it ever reaches the actual school it was intended for, it's not even worth the check it's printed on. I don't know what other states are like, but the Lotto in California is purely a tax for the poor and a windfall for the scum. I suspect that's why Arnold wanted to privatize the California Lotto, but whether it was to increase the lining in the scum's pocket or to reduce it, I'm not entirely sure. 

lilshawn:
wasn't there a guy trying to buy all the lotto numbers so he was guaranteeing a win in excess of the amount paid out buying tickets? i forget how much he spent trying it... also i'm to lazy too google or spel rigt and its late.

SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: lilshawn on December 29, 2011, 01:25:02 am ---wasn't there a guy trying to buy all the lotto numbers so he was guaranteeing a win in excess of the amount paid out buying tickets? i forget how much he spent trying it... also i'm to lazy too google or spel rigt and its late.

--- End quote ---

Wasn't that something like fifteen years ago? I think he was on TV someplace in Minnesota or something. Guy had several computers printing out thousands of those Lotto punch cards and scanning them at stores or some such. I don't remember what happened though.

I seem to recall the guy makes his living mailing entries to all those contests. I think he's the reason most contests nowadays forbid automated entries.

shmokes:

--- Quote from: lilshawn on December 29, 2011, 01:25:02 am ---wasn't there a guy trying to buy all the lotto numbers so he was guaranteeing a win in excess of the amount paid out buying tickets? i forget how much he spent trying it... also i'm to lazy too google or spel rigt and its late.

--- End quote ---

The problem is, if your chances of winning are 1 in 200 million, you have to buy 200 million tickets to guarantee a win and it still wouldn't actually be guaranteed. Not many people have the money to do this. And the risk is way too high. What if you buy 200 million tickets and your number still isn't drawn, or someone else also draws your number and you have to split the winnings? That's a lot of money to kiss goodbye.

lilshawn:

--- Quote from: shmokes on December 29, 2011, 08:57:59 am ---
--- Quote from: lilshawn on December 29, 2011, 01:25:02 am ---wasn't there a guy trying to buy all the lotto numbers so he was guaranteeing a win in excess of the amount paid out buying tickets? i forget how much he spent trying it... also i'm to lazy too google or spel rigt and its late.

--- End quote ---

The problem is, if your chances of winning are 1 in 200 million, you have to buy 200 million tickets to guarantee a win and it still wouldn't actually be guaranteed. Not many people have the money to do this. And the risk is way too high. What if you buy 200 million tickets and your number still isn't drawn, or someone else also draws your number and you have to split the winnings? That's a lot of money to kiss goodbye.

--- End quote ---

you actually have a chance. if you do the maths, there are 13,983,816 possible combinations... 49 × 48 × 47 × 46 × 45 × 44 = 10,068,347,520

since it doesn't matter the order of the draw numbers....  6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 =  720 orders of the winning combination....  Dividing 10,068,347,520 by 720 gives 13,983,816

seems one would only need to purchase $13,983,816 worth of tickets to guarantee a win (every possible permutation of numbers)...as long as the grand prize was over what the government would suck up... and depending on the prize pool spread, couldn't one make money doing this? (including the 5 of 6 and 4 of 6 or whatever prize winnings)

anybody interested in a scheme??  :lol

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