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

arxiv.org

51–60 of 62 posts

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

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there another study of people that won big have also lost it/squandered it all within a fairly short amount of time?

Even those who would be deemed "responsible" (already somewhat wealthy, otherwise stable) often end up far worse off. It often ends in losing friendships, ties with family, death/kidnapping/blackmail threats both close and far away, endless frivolous lawsuits, financial ruin, etc. The ratio of "happily ever after" stories to horror stories for winning the lottery seems a bit low for my tastes.

That’s just survivorship bias (or perhaps, the opposite).

You don’t hear the happily ever after stories because they don’t tend to reach out to the media after a few years and say “Hey! FYI I’m still rich and my life is perfect.”. They’re off enjoying their money somewhere. The scandals seem more common because those are the only situations that really get publicized.

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

#52
27 support tickets? Like...

1: Hi there! Sorry to bother you but I think I have a winning ticket for the Powerbrits Billions Megapounds but I seem to have received an error at the cashier while checking my ticket...

2: Hi, me again! Yes, in response, I made sure the ticket was for the correct lottery. And yes, the cashier was listening to me when I asked them to check it...

3: Hello, hope you're well! I'm working on getting you that cashier screenshot as well as a picture of my ticket. Just wanted to reiterate I'm sure it's a winner, and there seems to be a bug in the code...

4: Hi there! Sorry I can't take a 'clearer picture with the ticket actually visible and readable' because that's the bug in the ticket I'm telling you about! Yes, again I'm sure it was a winner, I picked the numbers myself! And now I would not like a complimentary replacement ticket for the next drawing, thank you very much! Please don't close this support ticket as completed, too, alright? What I'd like is ...

[[ 21 support tickets later ]]

24: Hi friend! Yes, I'm quite sure the numbers on my ticket are 6-9-11-15-17-21, the exact numbers of the winning draw I'm hoping you'll help me collect! You can see from my recent photo that the 1 is clearly visible in a number of places and if you turn it to the left, you'll see what looks like a 5 and 7 as well. Clearly the rest of the positions have some bug where the numbers become unclear and appear to temporarily represent other numbers, but I didn't write them unclearly in the original (sorry I misplaced that!), so it is clearly a bug in your software! You know what, friend? F--- this, I have been nothing but reasonable. I think I might have to go to Hacker News and tell everybody about the terrible things that have happened as a result of this atrocious run around you've been giving me!

[[ 2 support tickets later ]]

27: Oh, hi, Senior Support Analyst Manager Derrick, thank you so much for your warm and accommodating email! Why, yes, that would be delightful, I will gladly accept monthly part-payments, less taxes, deposited into my standard Bank of Ireland (Maldives) account. Terribly good of you, if I say so myself! You have a fantastic day, Derrick! I'll be sure to fill out that little "Support Questionnaire" you sent me in your last correspondence, too (probably from St Tropez idk). Fantastic stuff!

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

#53
I have a friend who once described state lotteries as “a tax on people who can’t do math”. That’s not particularly kind or fair. To me the combination of desperation that people feel that a lottery win would resolve a lot of their problems, and how many state-run programs are dependent on lottery funds to continue to function, is indicative of how bad an idea a lottery is.

It’s a trap for people who are desperate, trying to survive and a band-aid for a budget shortfall because people don’t want to pay taxes otherwise.

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

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The typical expected value of a lottery ticket is 50% of what you paid for it. That includes hitting the one-in-many-millions jackpot, which you could go many lifetimes without hitting. If it's given you don't hit the jackpot, then your expected value is much lower.

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

#55
post #46
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, spending a few bucks per week isn't necessarily irrational. The hope and entertainment has some value. And, of course, the marginal value of a couple bucks more in your pocket may be nil, but the life-changing experience of a win may have considerably more value; that is, marginal utility may not just flow smoothly downwards.

> isn't necessarily irrational I used to say this to justify buying 20 tickets twice a week. It's not irrational I can afford it, right? And the purchase gives me the psychological reward of dreaming about a big win. But then after every draw I'd check my numbers and suffer a twinge of buyer's remorse. For me, that (small) regret more than offset any positive psychological benefit. It was a minor addiction that did m…

Everything's different for everyone.

I buy a few tickets every time the expected value might be weakly positive, even though this still doesn't make it a "good purchase."

And I've played blackjack under conditions (rules and my carefulness of play) where it's expected to be slightly money-losing, but had an exhilarating couple of hours and conversation. Cheap entertainment compared to many other things.

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

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a point where the expected return is positive. Its around $1B or some large number like that. Sure the expected return is like 1% positive, but its positive.

How does that work? By linearity of expectation, if the expected value of buying 1 ticket is negative then the expected value of buying multiple tickets should be even more negative

Typically lotteries roll over the jackpot if nobody wins. So if there's a streak of no winners, the total jackpot amount can be more than the cost of buying every possible ticket.

Of course, if you did this you might get unlucky and find that there's another winner in that draw, in which case you'd have to split the winnings and probably wouldn't make your money back.

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

#57
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?

It depends on what you're trying to optimize for, and how much you're trying to optimize it.

If what you're concerned about is maximizing the odds of getting a jackpot, all you need to do is pick 27 different numbers. Say, 1-2-3-4-5-6 through 1-2-3-4-5-32.

If what you're concerned about is maximizing the odds of getting a jackpot that you don't need to share with anyone else, you shouldn't play any numbers that you think anyone else is likely to play, such as the numbers in this paper, six numbers that form a straght line on the play slip (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal), any six consecutive numbers, the winning numbers from any recent drawing[1], or famous lottery numbers like 4-8-15-16-23-42 (the mystical numbers from the TV show "Lost.")

If what you're concerned about is guaranteeing a small win of some kind, then use some rotation of the numbers in this paper.

If what you're concerned about is minimizing the variance in the outcomes you achieve, then you'll want a more complicated formula for picking tickets, taking into account the values of the prizes for matching 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 winning numbers. And if you're specifically looking for a set of tickets that's robust to operational interruptions in your ticket purchasing (what happens if the lottery system goes offline when you've bought ten of your 27 tickets, and you can't buy the last 17!?)[2].

But if one of the things you care about is the fully-loaded cost of buying 27 tickets, you'll almost certainly want to buy 27 random tickets, because picking specific numbers takes mental and physical effort, and 27 random tickets are unlikely to have enough overlap that it will have a significant impact on your likelihood of winning a large prize. The main downside of buying 27 random tickets is that it makes checking whether you won take more effort than if you already had your list of numbers.

And on that note, if what you care about is the fully-loaded cost of buying and redeeming your tickets, one of the best things you can do is the opposite of what this paper is about: you want to MINIMIZE the likelihood of winning a prize. Going to the store to cash a ticket takes effort, but it isn't much more effort to claim 27 prizes vs one single prize. So if you have a choice between a 1-in-27 chance of collecting 27 $2 prizes vs a 100% chance of collecting one $2 prize, you're better off with the former, simply because you can probably avoid an extra trip to the store.

[1] Unless you think there's a problem with the RNG system. IIRC about 15 years ago there was a state that drew the same lottery numbers 3 days in a row because they introduced a new computer PRNG and part of their runbook introduced the same seed for every draw; after the third consecutive draw they fixed the issue.

[2] I've had this happen to me, though the problem was that my bank froze my account partway through buying tickets, and I was buying a lot more than 27 tickets. The most famous/infamous lottery syndicate in modern history, a group from Australia that tried to buy every combination in the Virginia lottery in the early 1990s, also ran into logistical issues and was unable to finish buying their complete set of tickets, but they got lucky and hit the jackpot anyway.

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

#59
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even those who would be deemed "responsible" (already somewhat wealthy, otherwise stable) often end up far worse off. It often ends in losing friendships, ties with family, death/kidnapping/blackmail threats both close and far away, endless frivolous lawsuits, financial ruin, etc. The ratio of "happily ever after" stories to horror stories for winning the lottery seems a bit low for my tastes.

That’s just survivorship bias (or perhaps, the opposite). You don’t hear the happily ever after stories because they don’t tend to reach out to the media after a few years and say “Hey! FYI I’m still rich and my life is perfect.”. They’re off enjoying their money somewhere. The scandals seem more common because those are the only situations that really get publicized.

>they don’t tend to reach out to the media after a few years and say “Hey! FYI I’m still rich and my life is perfect.”

No, that's what social media is for

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

#60
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…

> You can't win if you don't play, but 2 tickets doesn't increase your odds significantly.

Going from 0 to 1 tickets increases your odds infinitely. The spread on your possible outcomes goes from $0-0 to something like -$2 to $100m heavily weighted toward the bottom.

Going from 1 ticket to 2 tickets to 40 tickets… increases your odds by a very minuscule amount. The spread on your possible outcomes is now like -$80 to $100m, still heavily weighted towards the bottom.

The marginal value of every ticket after the first is basically negative.

I don’t buy lottery tickets but buying _one_ makes sense to me. No more than that.

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