How to Win on Lottery Tickets

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Buying lottery tickets is easy, but since state-run lotteries in the USA typically pay out only half of their revenue to the winners, there's a house edge of about 50 percent. To boost your odds of winning on lottery tickets when choosing scratch-offs, try the singleton method, which relies on an understanding of the statistical quirks involved in attempts at randomizing numbers. To win on lottery tickets like the powerball game, you'll need to calculate the expected value of certain numbers before picking them. There's no sure way to consistently win on any lottery ticket, but there are some who swear by the legitimacy of these strategies when explaining their own good fortune.

Tips for Winning on Lottery Tickets

For scratch-offs, chart the outside numbers and note any numbers that appear only once. Draw a mock-up of the ticket and place a 1 in those spots. Many winners have three 1s in a row. For Powerball, find the probability of each win and multiply it by the payout for the win. Buy tickets that increase the expected value.

Method 1 of 2:

Winning Scratch-Off Tickets

Use the singleton method. Statisticians discovered a statistical quirk in the production of scratch-off tickets, which can double your chances of winning if exploited correctly. Basically, scratch off games operate under the assumption of "randomness," but can't be produced in a truly random way, because the lottery board needs to keep track of how many winning tickets are in circulation.

These are the games that can be deciphered using the singleton method. They're also typically among the cheapest lottery tickets, and have the lowest payouts, so you can buy several to practice. [1] X Research source

The digits you're looking for won't be the same--that would mean they would appear more than once. Remember, you're looking for numbers that appear only once.

Mark the ones. On a separate sheet of paper, draw a mock-up of the ticket, filling in "1" in place of the random digit in each space you find a singleton. A group of singletons will signal a winning card 60-90% of the time.

60% may not sound like a lot, but the average scratch-off card has a 30% chance of winning, so you've doubled your chances. Over a large group of tickets, this can yield a significant profit.

Develop this technique. Experiment with other scratch off tickets looking for repetitions in the "random" numbers. All of them work on the same principle, and you might be able to discover an anomaly that you can exploit in a particular game. Buy cheap tickets and study them to see what you can come up with.

Advertisement Method 2 of 2:

Winning Powerball Games

In other words, this assumes the powerball lottery works like a fantasy football pool: five people throw in five bucks, the winner gets $25.

Determine the probability of each possible "win." This will depend upon the specific powerball or number game you're playing. If it's a six-digit number that you pick, there are nine possibilities for each position and six different positions. Since each outcome is equally likely, you'll need to calculate a permutation. Alternatively, the odds should be listed in the game's rules. [2] X Research source

Account for any non-cash prizes by taking their cash value into account, and convert any annuities (annual distributions of prize money) into a lump sum for the purposes of this calculation.

One example of this was the Missouri Lottery's promotion in the daily Pick 3. Normally a player has a 1/1000 chance of winning a $600 prize, making a $1 ticket worth only $0.60. The promotion was to draw a second winning combination on one randomly selected day of the week. Originally, the drawing to determine whether the bonus would occur that day held six white balls and one orange, but on the last day of the week, all six white balls had been removed, leaving only the orange ball and ensuring a double drawing on the last day. [3] X Research source This doubled the value of tickets for that drawing and converted them from an expected 40 percent loss to a 20 percent gain. See table 1 below for how the expected value varied that week.

The Massachusetts lottery imposed purchase limits after it was discovered that their Cash Win-fail game had a positive expected value after a jackpot was rolled down to increase the payouts for lower level prizes.
In the Mega Millions multi-state lottery, jackpots are split equally among all winners who match all numbers. If a player could ensure that he wouldn't have to split the jackpot, Mega Millions becomes a smart bet whenever the jackpot exceeds about $420 million, but this calculation doesn't account for the possibility of a split jackpot. It has been theorized that the ticket buying frenzies as the jackpot rises increases the likelihood of multiple winners sufficiently that the jackpot can never get large enough to give a ticket a positive expected value. [4] X Research source

Consider the tax implications. In the United States, gambling winnings are taxable, but gambling losses are only deductible to offset winnings. This legal asymmetry may affect the math. The double draw promotion that resulted in a 20 percent player advantage before tax considerations is only profitable after taxes, provided the player can purchase the hundreds of tickets required to cover a significant fraction of the 1000 outcomes.

Community Q&A

How do I pick a lottery number? Community Answer Pick random numbers or numbers that are significant to you. There are no ideal numbers to pick.

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Is it better to buy 20 $1 tickets or two $10 tickets or one $20 ticket? Community Answer

I work at a store that sells Missouri Lottery. $1 scratchers have an 8-1 winning probability including a free ticket win, $10 tickets have around a 4-1 chance of winning including the $10 prize. The biggest win I've seen off a $1 ticket since I've worked there is $50. Most of the wins are free ticket wins. Once in awhile I see a $5 or $10 win.

Is there ever a 100% chance of winning? Community Answer

No, not that I know of. But, if there was one, you'd still not have a 100% chance of profiting because a prize can be smaller than the price of the ticket itself.

Ask a Question 200 characters left Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Advertisement Table 1: Calculating how the expected value of the Missouri promotion changes as each white ball is removed

Day	White Balls	Orange Balls	Probability of second drawing	Expected profit/loss per ticket
Normal	N/A	N/A	0	-$0.40
1	6	1	0.143	-$0.31
2	5	1	0.167	-$0.30
3	4	1	0.200	-$0.28
4	3	1	0.250	-$0.25
5	2	1	0.333	-$0.20
6	1	1	0.500	-$0.10
7	0	1	1.000	+$0.20

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Beware of lottery scams, where scammers contact unsuspecting victims, claiming they supposedly won a prize, when there really isn't one. You cannot win a lottery prize without actually playing the game first. [5] X Trustworthy Source Federal Trade Commission Website with up-to-date information for consumers from the Federal Trade Commisson Go to source