Is it +EV To Purchase All Powerball Combos for $350 Million? (1 Viewer)

Anthony Martino

Anthony Martino

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Given the jackpot is at $1.5 Billion, even with the possibility of a split, when you factor in all the other winners you hit holding ALL combinations, plus the millions in losses to offset your win, does it become +EV at this point to purchase every single combo?

And if so..........group buy?
 
I thought I read some where that the answer is a big fat no. One reason, it would years to actually purchase every single ticket. Then if you could somehow manage to do that. If you chop it with anyone your fucked.
 
It would actually cost $584 million to buy every possible combo. Think I heard somewhere even if you were able to buy one ticket every second it would take like a decade to buy them all ;)
 
Ronoh said:
It would actually cost $584 million to buy every possible combo. Think I heard somewhere even if you were able to buy one ticket every second it would take like a decade to buy them all ;)
Click to expand...

Weird, for some reason my first search via Google returned a thing telling me 175.2 million possible combinations at $2 each was a bit over $350 million. But now everything is showing what you said
 
Anthony Martino said:
Weird, for some reason my first search via Google returned a thing telling me 175.2 million possible combinations at $2 each was a bit over $350 million. But now everything is showing what you said
Click to expand...

175M+ combinations is based on 59 white balls and 35 power balls. It's covered in the other PowerBall thread.
 
They added more balls recently to make it harder to win. That's why the pots are getting big lately.
 
As everyone else has stated, It is impossible to manually enter all of the tickets. But you do need to consider that you will also win every other winning combination, not just the big prize.

Nevermind. I see Anthony already mentions that.
 
ssanel54 said:
As everyone else has stated, It is impossible to manually enter all of the tickets. But you do need to consider that you will also win every other winning combination, not just the big prize.

Nevermind. I see Anthony already mentions that.
Click to expand...
You would win every combination of every prize, better hope for a x5 multiplier ;)

Can also write off all of your losing tickets off the taxes owed on your winning. I would guess you might break about even if you chop with one other ticket...
 
Oooh, a big problem is that the $1.5 billion is the annuity rate, the actual cash value is only around $900 million I think, which severely cuts into your return, and you're definitely fucked if you split.
 
I see several estimates that 90+% of the numbers are going to be picked by someone this draw (maybe as high as 98%). Someone holding all the possible tickets combinations would almost always have to share the prize, perhaps even a three or more way chop.

If the odds of winning the big prize are just under 300,000,000 to one, then that is how many possible combinations there are. Figure the group buy would cost $600,000,000.

You would get a tax shield for the costs, so if you were the sole winner the group buy would be profitable in theory. In practice there are profound management problems. You would need to invent a mechanical way to print the ticket slips (because we aren't filling out 300 million of those by hand!). There is always the risk that the system breaks down and you miss some of the combinations. Given 300 million chances to make mistakes, you have to accept there will be some chance your group buy will have holes in it. And after the drawing someone will need to sort through all 60 million play slips. each with 5 numbers and pick out all the winning ones - there will be ~12 million winning numbers. Even the dinky $4 winners total to something like 30 million dollars.

So not an easy task at all. Raise $600,000,000 in short order. Print a drawing slip for every combination. Take them all over the country to get them processed by the drawing deadline. Hope you don't make a terrible mistake. Then sort through all the tickets to cash the winning ones. Oh - and avoid getting chopped.

Good luck! -=- DrStrange
 
DrStrange said:
I see several estimates that 90+% of the numbers are going to be picked by someone this draw (maybe as high as 98%). Someone holding all the possible tickets combinations would almost always have to share the prize, perhaps even a three or more way chop.

If the odds of winning the big prize are just under 300,000,000 to one, then that is how many possible combinations there are. Figure the group buy would cost $600,000,000.

You would get a tax shield for the costs, so if you were the sole winner the group buy would be profitable in theory. In practice there are profound management problems. You would need to invent a mechanical way to print the ticket slips (because we aren't filling out 300 million of those by hand!). There is always the risk that the system breaks down and you miss some of the combinations. Given 300 million chances to make mistakes, you have to accept there will be some chance your group buy will have holes in it. And after the drawing someone will need to sort through all 60 million play slips. each with 5 numbers and pick out all the winning ones - there will be ~12 million winning numbers. Even the dinky $4 winners total to something like 30 million dollars.

So not an easy task at all. Raise $600,000,000 in short order. Print a drawing slip for every combination. Take them all over the country to get them processed by the drawing deadline. Hope you don't make a terrible mistake. Then sort through all the tickets to cash the winning ones. Oh - and avoid getting chopped.

Good luck! -=- DrStrange
Click to expand...


404797
 
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I read last year when the jackpot got huge that it is possible to buy every single combo but you would need about 2400 of your friends to fill out tickets from the end of the drawing that didn't hit, up until the new drawing.
 
If I remember right, you can get large blocks of numbers to lottery officials to import into the system as tickets rather than fill out millions of forms. Something like, "here is 200M number combinations and $400M dollars" they certify and add any winners into the system manually. Of course, maybe I dreamed this, but seems logical for large ticket blocks.
 
couldnt you conceivably PRE-fill out the tickets starting today until you finish every single combo, and if the powerball gets over the threshold to make it profitable, just divide the tickets by a certain amount and have individuals go to 100s of stores to get their slips
 
BiGGyT said:
If I remember right, you can get large blocks of numbers to lottery officials to import into the system as tickets rather than fill out millions of forms. Something like, "here is 200M number combinations and $400M dollars" they certify and add any winners into the system manually. Of course, maybe I dreamed this, but seems logical for large ticket blocks.
Click to expand...

You probably dreamed this. I actually worked for a company that wrote software for lottery systems (and race tracks) and I recall someone asking to do something similar in another state.
Their request was denied... adding winning tickets to the system after the fact would be pretty difficult
 
manamongkids said:
couldnt you conceivably PRE-fill out the tickets starting today until you finish every single combo, and if the powerball gets over the threshold to make it profitable, just divide the tickets by a certain amount and have individuals go to 100s of stores to get their slips
Click to expand...

EDITED:

Average paper thickness: 0.1 mm
Sheets: 60 Million (5 plays per sheet)
6 km high stack of sheets
300 friends
20 m high stack per friend, or 100 20 cm stacks

That's actually not entirely unfeasible, especially when I reconsider that you only need one sheet per 5 plays (should fit in a couple suitcases)....

Better plan: go to the convenience store and rob the $2 million in cash from the guy parking a pickup full of powerball slips.
 
Last edited:
MikesDad said:
You probably dreamed this. I actually worked for a company that wrote software for lottery systems (and race tracks) and I recall someone asking to do something similar in another state.
Their request was denied... adding winning tickets to the system after the fact would be pretty difficult
Click to expand...

I had heard of bulk sales, but did not realize (until reading some about prior bulk purchases) that they still run it all through a terminal. To keep the integrity of the game, I suppose it makes sense, but seems like you could run a script on the database to add numbers for a bulk purchase rather than complete about 60 million fill in forms (each has 5 on it).

Meh, I have my 10 tix, 9 more than I need ;)
 
QuiQuog said:
I think that the annuity value is so much less than the jackpot total because of taxes.
Click to expand...
No, the cash payout number is before taxes. Taking in bulk is so much less than the advertised payment because if you take it over 30 years they are still making bank on the money they are holding for you.

Win it solo and you'd only be taxed on about half of the prize as you can write off hundreds of millions in losing tickets. Chop it and you're not paying any taxes but still ending up down a bit I would imagine.
 
Honestly though, of you could afford all of the numbers/tickets, do you even need to try to win??
 
Just read this:
You're 100 times more likely to win the Powerball twice in a row than you are selecting a perfect NCAA basketball bracket. The chances of a flawless bracket is 1 in 9.2 quintillion.
 

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