Mathematician Breaks Down the Best Ways to Win the Lottery

[00:00] but of course, we had to test it ourselves, - I didn't win anything. - I got nothing. I lost.

[00:14] - I have won $5, so I'm up by $2. of the many lottery games out there. at both the state and national level, and

[00:27] because the jackpots are so big. to win than other lotteries. a bigger chance of winning means lower payout.

[00:42] if you bet on red or black, you get less money in return in return because your odds of winning Similarly, your odds of winning

[00:56] on a Powerball or Mega Millions ticket are very low, - [Narrator] Let's look at that one more time. about one in 300,000,000.

[01:09] and some of them are still pretty big, - [Narrator] Next, playing certain numbers. of winning by some strategy

[01:23] However, for games like Powerball and Mega Millions, is to be the only one who wins the jackpot

[01:35] you'd like to pick unpopular numbers. Don't pick dates, for example, Other advice might be, if you look

[01:49] don't just pick a column of numbers on that ticket, - [Narrator] Repeat winners, like Richard Lustig, won over $1,000,000, advocated for playing sequential numbers.

[02:03] That kind of thing is gonna give you the same chance However, if you look at a ticket like that, it looks weird.

[02:17] the jackpot, which is good. how it strikes me as a mathematician. to increase their odds of winning the lottery?

[02:31] in the drawing. 'cause there's 300,000,000 tickets. You need a whole army of helpers.

[02:45] but for smaller state level lotteries, and also a smaller jackpot, people have done that. in 1986, a syndicate did that in Virginia in 1992,

[03:01] Now, in these cases, they didn't actually succeed that they got lucky and they did win the jackpot. - [Narrator] Now, if you do actually decide to do this,

[03:14] to the stores and buy those tickets. 'cause they're not allowed to do that and there's another 'gotcha' that's really obvious,

[03:28] which is it could happen that someone else also wins So, as someone trying to pursue this strategy, - [Narrator] Finally, some states have a higher chance

[03:42] Statisticians and economists have mapped - A good recipe to look for is you want a lottery where maybe not a lot

[03:54] So, there's a classic example of Oregon in 1999. and yet, they didn't sell that many tickets, in such a drawing, you're unlikely to share the jackpot.

[04:11] Similarly, in mid-aughts in Texas, the Llano, and so looking around for those kinds of drawings, on buying a lottery ticket.

[04:23] of return as well. - The lottery has printed it out and picked the prizes than the amount people are gonna spend on tickets,

[04:37] On average, you buy scratcher tickets That said, sometimes it happens that the big prizes

[04:51] at the beginning of the game, up those tickets at the beginning got unlucky and then the remaining lottery tickets,

[05:04] have too many prizes. of the prizes have been claimed into other websites like scratch off-odds.com

[05:17] and they'll tell you sort have better payouts right now. this entire video and still think,

[05:30] is there a way you can actually guarantee a lottery win? a four-digit number That means you're gonna bet on a four-digit number

[05:46] with repeated digits, like 1122, or 1212, it bets all the six possible ways in it and two twos in it,

[05:58] and if you do that, your odds of winning are one in 1,667, if you win that bet, you will get $800, You probably will lose money, just so you know.

[06:12] but it is a recipe for getting - [Narrator] And there even used to be a game where you Marge and Jerry Selbee ended up winning

[06:26] almost $8,000,000 playing the Massachusetts Cash Windfall. - We are bettin' 40,000. We're professional lottery players.

[06:41] was when the jackpot got pretty big, and increase the value of the smaller prizes.

[06:53] it's about a one in 9,000,000 chance, So, if you could buy some, like, say you could buy 1,000,000 tickets,

[07:07] so big, one in nine, of the lower tier prizes, which are now bigger, you're gonna make money out of your total investment.

[07:20] It's really hard and unusual to be could reasonably expect to make money on the lottery. You might get lucky, but it's really getting lucky,

[07:33] I personally buy lottery tickets. for a few days about, oh, And that's really worth something.

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