Lucky dip: What is the best strategy to win the lottery?
What gives you better chances of winning the lottery? Buying one ticket per week [52 weeks] or 52 tickets each year.
Antoon Pelsser Maastricht, The Netherlands
We can answer this by assuming that N tickets are sold each week and that only one prize will be awarded. Every ticket has a chance to win 1/N.
52 weekly tickets are worth 52 chances of losing. Thus, the chance of winning at least one time is 1 - (N-1)/N/52. The probability of winning 52 tickets per year is 52/N.
The second probability is greater than the previous. The extreme case is when there are only 52 tickets, in which case buying all 52 guarantees a win. The advantage drops quickly when N increases. If N = 1000, the odds of winning are 0.522% if you buy 52 tickets simultaneously, and 0.0506% if you purchase weekly tickets.
This compensates for the lower chance of winning if you buy tickets weekly.
Brian Horton West Launceston Tasmania Australia
Never purchase more than one ticket for a lottery. One ticket per week could be enough to win the top prize more than once. A 52-ticket purchase will not guarantee you more than one win.
Instead of looking at the chances of winning, think about the likelihood of losing money. If the prize pool exceeds 60% of the total value of tickets sold, then purchasing more than 60% of tickets will guarantee that you lose money. Even if your purchase is less than 60 percent, you have a greater chance of losing more money.
You will be better off if you buy fewer tickets. Research shows that winners of large lotteries have twice the chance of becoming bankrupt within the five years following their win. Zero is therefore the best number.
Spencer Weart - Hastings-on-Hudson - New York, US
The odds of winning are slightly higher if you purchase 52 tickets annually. Your chances of winning are negligible in either case. What you really are buying is the chance to fantasize for days about hitting it big.
In this way, it is better to buy one ticket each week. You can also imagine what you would do if you won a ticket.
Stephen Johnson, Eugene, Oregon
One in 250 million people has a chance of winning the grand prizes in mega lotteries. Buy 52 tickets for a single lottery and your odds of winning the grand prize are increased to 52 of 250 million or approximately 4.8million.The odds of winning in casino games are much better than those found elsewhere. In the US, one in 38 people will win on roulette, while the odds that they will win on any number of numbers in blackjack are 1 in 2.11, or 47.4%, respectively. Because of the smaller potential payoff, these games are not nearly as attractive than the lottery.
This preference for low odds and a high payoff over better odds is an economic error that has undermined the foundations of microeconomics established by Oskar Morgenstern (John Von Neumann) in 1944.
They expected people to behave rationally and place such bets based on the mathematical outcome. The work of psychologists, including Daniel Kahneman (who won a Nobel prize) showed that irrational biases, though predictable, govern most economic decisions, particularly gambling.
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