That would only be the case IF the first 3 numbers had to match in order, for this draw the order does not matter with the exception of the powerball.

My god lotteries have bad odds?


Why didn't anyone tell me this sooner.

Kassel's pretty close to the actual chance of winning it with three random numbers. If you multiply the probability of winning by the jackpot, you see that your expected winnings are about .022 pp (this is assuming you pay nothing to buy your ticket). So if you pay 2pp to buy your ticket, you're expected to lose 1.978pp. Mandalay's stated odds are off by a factor of about 100. If Mandalay's stated odds were correct, you'd actually have an expected profit (including the 2pp buy-in price) of 0.199 pp, making the game worth playing.

Alternatively, we can think about buying every ticket. There are a total of 39(59 + 59*58 + 59*58*57) = 7,742,865 possible tickets (this does NOT double-count tickets like 1, 1, 2, 3 vs. 1, 2, 1, 3, which should be considered the same ticket since both win the same drawing). Since each ticket costs 2pp, we pay 15,485,730pp when we buy every single ticket. We are guaranteed to win, so we get the jackpot of 30,000pp for our trouble.

I hadn't taken into account the duplicate numbers. That was my fault.

Guys, it's a LOTTERY! It's supposed to be a game of chance. You're supposed to get lucky. There's no skill here. Buy a ticket and hope for the best. Millions upon millions of people play the powerball every single year. I don't think they are buying tickets and expecting to win. You take a chance and hope to get lucky.

I could certainly lower the requirements needed to win, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not selling anywhere near 15,000 tickets for this thing. I made money on the first one, but I also take a big risk if I actually lose. If I got some more interest, maybe I'd change things up a bit.