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You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

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11–20 of 62 posts

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#11
post #6

Not worth promoting mathmatical oddities that encourage people to gamble, in my opinion.

£2.00 * 27 is a guarantee to win something, with the most likely outcome a "Free Lucky Dip", or a £2.00 value. This is swaying no one's opinion.

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#12
post #6

Not worth promoting mathmatical oddities that encourage people to gamble, in my opinion.

The UK lottery does a lot of good with its funds and should be mentally separated from other betting/gambling firms in my opinion.

If you want to "gamble" its the best option, if you don't you can always wait for the government to inflate your cash away or spend it on Hilton rooms for sailors.

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#14
post #4

Not a "win" in the financial aspect of the game: "... they matched just two balls on three of the tickets, the reward being three lucky dip tries on a subsequent lottery, each of which came to nothing. Since a ticket costs £2, the experiment represented a loss to the authors of £54. This unfortunate incident therefore serves both as a verification of our result and of the principle that one should expect to lose mone…

When I was young I had a friend who bought one Massachusetts (US) lottery ticket a week. I remember he "won" (basically got his money back). When he went to cash out the cashier asked him, "do you want the money.. or another ticket". He took the another ticket and promptly lost. lesson learned. You can't win if you don't play, but 2 tickets doesn't increase your odds significantly.

Where I worked there was a convenience store store. I got to know the owners a bit. One day they were posting a sign "People at our store won $850,000 on the lottery last year". I said, "wow thats a lot". She turned, shook her head and said "I know what they've spent... its not a lot." and proceeded into a mini tirade against gambling, which she promptly stopped when a customer entered the store. Its profitiable. But in the US with sports gambling everywhere, I wonder if lotteries have lost their luster.

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#16
post #8

If you were going to run a syndicate with 27 entrants, would you be better off buying these 27 tickets or a random bunch of 27 tickets in terms of getting a jackpot? Or is there no difference in terms of likelihood of getting a significant win?

These 27 ensure whatever gets pulled you will match two.

Or to put it another way, this system ensures you only lose £52 a week maximum before any additional free lucky dips or rolldowns.

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#17
post #4

Not a "win" in the financial aspect of the game: "... they matched just two balls on three of the tickets, the reward being three lucky dip tries on a subsequent lottery, each of which came to nothing. Since a ticket costs £2, the experiment represented a loss to the authors of £54. This unfortunate incident therefore serves both as a verification of our result and of the principle that one should expect to lose mone…

When I was young I had a friend who bought one Massachusetts (US) lottery ticket a week. I remember he "won" (basically got his money back). When he went to cash out the cashier asked him, "do you want the money.. or another ticket". He took the another ticket and promptly lost. lesson learned. You can't win if you don't play, but 2 tickets doesn't increase your odds significantly. Where I worked there was a convenie…

That's the Law of Large Numbers working. A friend of mine won a small but not insignificant amount in a lottery and then "reinvested" it in the lottery and, as expected, lost it all.

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#18
post #8

If you were going to run a syndicate with 27 entrants, would you be better off buying these 27 tickets or a random bunch of 27 tickets in terms of getting a jackpot? Or is there no difference in terms of likelihood of getting a significant win?

This paper is focused on the little prizes. The odds of winning the jackpot will be the same for any play.

In fact the only thing you can do in the lottery is to avoid "popular" sequences like birthdays etc, so that if you do win you don't have to split it with a bunch of people.

A lottery in the Philippines famously had 433 winners, who all played 9, 18, 27, 36, 45 and 54. (https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/asia/philippines-grand-lotto-...)

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#19
post #4

Not a "win" in the financial aspect of the game: "... they matched just two balls on three of the tickets, the reward being three lucky dip tries on a subsequent lottery, each of which came to nothing. Since a ticket costs £2, the experiment represented a loss to the authors of £54. This unfortunate incident therefore serves both as a verification of our result and of the principle that one should expect to lose mone…

When I was young I had a friend who bought one Massachusetts (US) lottery ticket a week. I remember he "won" (basically got his money back). When he went to cash out the cashier asked him, "do you want the money.. or another ticket". He took the another ticket and promptly lost. lesson learned. You can't win if you don't play, but 2 tickets doesn't increase your odds significantly. Where I worked there was a convenie…

There's a few Powerball Simulators (largest US lottery) out there - simulate buying 1 ticket a week indefinitely.

It usually works out to about a -90% ROI, though I did just somewhat undermine my point by hitting $2,000,000 (5 white balls + powerplay) after 246 years and becoming profitable. First time I've ever hit on one of these, I let one go for several millenia one time.

http://adamlamers.com/lottery_simulator

Re: You need 27 tickets to guarantee a win on the UK National Lottery

#20
post #12
post #6

Not worth promoting mathmatical oddities that encourage people to gamble, in my opinion.

The UK lottery does a lot of good with its funds and should be mentally separated from other betting/gambling firms in my opinion. If you want to "gamble" its the best option, if you don't you can always wait for the government to inflate your cash away or spend it on Hilton rooms for sailors.

In no universe is the UK lottery good. All lotteries, the UK lottery included, are effectively sucking money out of the poor. It is profoundly, grotesquely regressive.

If the UK wanted to have an ethical, legitimate mechanism for distributing funds, it should levy a progressive tax that raises the same amount of money as the lottery.

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