** Mandalay Bay Powerball Lottery!! **

[MandalayBay]

Introducing the Mandalay Bay Powerball Lottery!

Current Jackpot: 30,000pp
Next Drawing: Tuesday, December 28th @ 11:30 PM EST

Over 2000 tickets were sold for the first lotto, and 1000pp was awarded to winners! Don't miss your chance to win the jackpot this time!

Rules:


Tickets cost 2pp and are unlimited
When submitting numbers, the 4th number listed will always be your powerball number.
First 3 numbers must be between 1 and 59. 4th number must be between 1 and 39.
At time of drawing, Mandalaybay will /random 1 59 three times in a row, then /random 1 39 for the powerball number. Witnesses will be on hand to ensure credibility.
You do not need to match the first 3 numbers in order, but your 4th number must match the powerball number.
You must match all 3 numbers and the powerball number to win the jackpot.
The jackpot will increase after each drawing if there are no winners. Increase will be determined by Mandalaybay and will be based on level of participation.
Numbers may not be changed after purchase.


Come to EC Tunnel and find Mandalaybay to buy your tickets now!

Current ticket list:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AmQvWUEZ1yMvdFo1UDRIM1ZybmNxMDJDdFY0QmY1b 0E&hl=en&output=html

[Thatguy05]

another way for bob to make money, as if he doesnt have enough alrdy!!

[OngorDrakan]

This is awesome. Totally going to get some tickets.

[citizen1080]

another way for bob to make money, as if he doesnt have enough alrdy!!

I believe he said the odds are 1/13k - so I guess I could buy 13 thousand tickets or like 22k in tickets..8k profit..would kinda ruin the fun of it tho =)

[Omnimorph]

I believe he said the odds are 1/13k - so I guess I could buy 13 thousand tickets or like 22k in tickets..8k profit..would kinda ruin the fun of it tho =)

Soon as 2 people did this, you'd lose out as the jackpot would be split.

[Orruar]

Actually, the odds are 1 in 1.44M. That bet is something like a -99% ROI. Good luck on that.

[MandalayBay]

It's 1 in 13,644.24 to be exact.

[MandalayBay]

The regular powerball with 6 total numbers is 1 in 195 million.

[Kassel]

Its xmas eve and i am stuck at work for another hour and no one wants to buy business Insurance today so i am doing some math.


3 numbers from @ 59 which can be in any order + 1 number in 39.
Key diff here from "true" powerball is the numbers can be redrawn via /rand.

so

3/59 = 0.050847458
2/59 = 0.033898305
1/59 = 0.016949153
1/39 = 0.025641026

Multiply all those to get = 0.00000074908

1 / 0.00000074908 = 1,334,970.8

So your odds of the jackpot are about 1 in 1.335 mill.

I think i will buy a ticket when i log in for and play the reverse karma game.

Good luck players !

[Valafea]

Seriously, if you want to throw your money away, give it to me.

Btw, each roll is independent of the others, so your numbers are off by a factor of 6. It's (1/59 x 1/59 x 1/59 x 1/39), which is a bit under 1 in 8 million.

[Kassel]

Seriously, if you want to throw your money away, give it to me.

Btw, each roll is independent of the others, so your numbers are off by a factor of 6. It's (1/59 x 1/59 x 1/59 x 1/39), which is a bit under 1 in 8 million.

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.

[Yam]

My god lotteries have bad odds?


Why didn't anyone tell me this sooner.

[Estu]

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.

[MandalayBay]

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.