How to Win The Lottery Without Going Bitter, Broke, and Disillusioned

Want to win the lottery? It's possible but depending on the game you may go broke unless you get lucky.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Luck or a simple understanding of basic math.

1. First you need to figure out the statistical probability of winning the lottery. If there are 20 tickets other in a lottery then you need to buy 20 tickets yourself to get a 50% of winning. You can calculate your probability of winning by (X) being the number of tickets already in the pot, (Y) being the total amount of tickets you are going to buy, then calculate using the formula (Y)/((Y)+(X)). That's your percentage.

2. To get a near certainty of winning the jackpot then you'll need to flood the entries with 99 multiple by the amount of tickets already in. This will give you a 99 percent chance of winning.

3. As you may already know, participating in a lottery drawing is almost always -EV (negative expected value) because in the long term the Large Number Law dictates that the larger the number of tries than the closer the probability will get to it's true value. Example: If you flip a coin 5 times you could get heads 100% of the time but if you flip it a million times then it will always be 50% heads.

4. If a ticket cost one dollar and nine other people have a ticket with the lottery prize being 10 dollars then you will breakeven at zero loss and zero profit but only if you play the game a large number of times due to the Large Number Law.

5. To determine if the game is profitable or not you'll need to first calculate the probability of winning and the ticket percentage ratio to the lottery prize. Use formula (Y)/((Y)+(X)) to determine the probability. To find the ticket percentage divide the ticket value by the lottery prize value (TV/LV). If the win probability and ticket percentage are equal then you will breakeven over the long run. If the win probability is greater than the ticket percentage then you will profit over the long run. If the win probability is lower than the ticket percentage then you will lose over the long run.

6. Just so you know, most games are -EV (how else will the sponsor make money) except for games like poker where you're playing against other players. (assuming you're good enough so that the profits negate the house rake.)

[sonni57]

on 8/7/2009 I don't have very good luck so I don't gamble and I never and I mean never win anything.