Making money playing the lottery

Upon reading this headline, you probably thought making money playing the lottery experiment was doomed to lttery. You clicked. I also thought the experiment makint be a dumb waste of money. I did it. Because hope. I am by no means a gambler. Prior to this experiment, my exposure to the lottery consisted of tickets I asked my mom to buy me as a kid and sheets of scratch-offs received as gifts for holidays. This experiment has reinforced my determination to maintain my relatively risk-free lifestyle.

What are the odds?

Feeling lucky? You’d better be if you play the lottery. Depending on which one you play, you have some pretty long odds. Let’s look at it another way. Assume you went to the largest stadium in the world—which happens to be in North Korea. The stadium was filled to capacity. As part of the price of your ticket, you were entered into a lottery where you could win a new car. In that case, your odds of winning are 1 in , Would you be sitting on the edge of your seat in that stadium as they’re reading the ticket number or would you believe that, realistically, you’re not going to win? To equal the odds of winning the lottery, you would have to fill that same stadium to capacity more times and put all of those people together and have the same drawing for the one car. Would anybody believe they could actually win in a crowd of people that large? Still not convinced? If they were giving away a new home to just one person and everybody in the six most populated states in the United States entered, that would equal your chances of winning the lottery. Of course, someone has to win the lottery, and the only way to win it is to be in it, as the ads say. But what’s the best way to be in it? The rules of probability dictate you do not increase your odds of winning the lottery by playing frequently. So each time you play the lottery, there is independent probability—much like a coin toss where each and every toss, regardless of the number of tosses, has a one in two probability of landing on heads. The odds stay the same—in the lottery and the coin toss—regardless of the frequency of playing.

The results, and what I could have done better

If you read books or search the internet for how to win the lottery, you’ll find a lot of tips that don’t work. Lottery frequency schemes every number has an equal chance of winning, no matter how recently it was drawn , software that’s supposed to be better at picking numbers, and other forms of wishful thinking abound. There is no way to predict the numbers that will come up in the lottery. The drawings are completely random, so the best you can do is try to pick unusual numbers so you won’t have to split in case there’s a tie.

Playing and “Winning” the Lottery

Is there a way to game the lottery? Without ever winning a jackpot, a small group of bettors have managed to milk a game called Cash WinFall for millions. A computer scientist from MIT and a low-profile couple that used to run a corner store in Michigan are among the players who apparently figured out an incredibly profitable glitch in one Massachusetts lottery game, according to the Boston Globe. The game, Cash WinFall, pays a jackpot to the owner of a ticket with numbers matching those on six randomly selected balls. Likewise, the prizes for matching three or four numbers rose in value as the overall jackpot increased. And believe it or not, by playing this game a certain way, at certain times, bettors are almost guaranteed to come out as winners. The strategy to take advantage of the system almost seems as if it were cooked up by the people running the lottery: to ensure profits, the player must buy a ton of lottery tickets. In May, when there was a rolldown week, just three groups including the Selbees, of course hit 1, of the 1, winning tickets statewide. The players, as well as the stores selling the tickets, are remaining quiet about the game, not wanting a good thing ruined. Lu was unavailable for comment, off on a five-week vacation in Europe, though his company has been buying Cash WinFall tickets in his absence. Thus far, the only actions the state has taken are to temporarily suspend a few stores from selling lottery tickets — not because of suspicion of ticket fraud but for violations such as selling tickets without the purchaser present or when only one employee is in the store, which is not allowed. But essentially, the game remains the same, with the odds and payout system unchanged. Something tells me there will be a lot more players as word gets around. A lot more. Like with most lotteries, nearly all of them will lose. Find him on Twitter at bradrtuttle.

Scratch-off secrets revealed

Is it ever worth playing?

If you need to make money quickly, playing the lottery is certainly not your best bet. The odds of winning the lottery are incredibly lottegy, so why not try other ways to earn money quickly that making money playing the lottery have more guaranteed returns. This article was co-authored by our trained team of editors and researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Together, they cited information from 15 references. Categories: Making Money. Log in Facebook Loading Google Loading Civic Loading No account yet? Create an account. Edit this Article. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. By using our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Article Edit. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Learn more Method 1. List items for sale online. One of lotteyr easiest ways to make some quick cash is to sell unwanted items online. There are a large number of well-known sites that provide a platform for. You may decide to list items on sites that have a large number of visitors, or choose a more niche site where your items will stand out from the crowd. You could consider posting listings across multiple sites, but remember that as soon as an item is sold you will have to quickly remove the listings from any other sites.