What are the Odds of You Winning the Lottery?
We all dream of winning the lottery; ironically we dream of this whether we play for it or not. While there is often little more to these dreams than fantasy, what if the near impossible happened and you did manage to score a multimillion Euro sum - what are the odds of this actually happening?
True poker players know where they stand when playing against the house and make their plays based on calculated decisions.
One would think that regular lotto players do the same, at least to some extent, but the reality is that most people have no idea what their chances are to win when buying those tickets.
Therefore, we would like to break down the numbers and figure out the odds against the ‘house,’ in this case, the lotto company, to offer some guidance on what is one of the most ambiguous bets you can ever make.
Unfortunately, calculating this on your own requires quite a bit of math, since the equation includes factorials.
We won’t get into too much detail as we have found a calculator that can do all the work for you. What we will get into are the numbers you need to find out and plug into the program to figure out your chances of winning:
- What is the number of numbers that will be drawn (how many numbered balls will be pulled)?
- What is the lowest possible value you can choose or receive?
- What is the highest possible value you can choose or receive?
Once you know these values, you can enter them here. You will need to do some scrolling but toward the bottom you can see in a small box your odds of winning your chosen lotto depending on the company and region you are in.
If you are genuinely interested in how the equation works, you can scroll more slowly to get a detailed explanation.
Regardless of your mathematical curiosity, this is an incredibly handy tool for those of you who are not sure which lotto to choose. And, while buying a lottery ticket is not really a big investment, why not place your chips on a more favorable bet?
Let’s say you finally win the lotto. Aside from the truly heartbreaking (but secretly satisfying) tales of lottery winners who squandered their wealth within a few short months, there are some success stories of people who retire and manage to stay liquid for the next several decades of their life.
While it is a less glamorous option, annuity over a monthly or weekly period will make ending up as a tragic tabloid news story a less likely fate for you.
You may also be happy to hear that there are more ways to win weekly money than the lotto; if you manage to make it to the top four of Mr. Green’s Leaderboard you can win €1,000 a week for an entire year!
All in all, thanks to the internet there are plenty of ways to waste your money, but also plenty of tips and hacks to spend it more wisely.
When it comes to playing for a lottery, your odds can either be one in a few hundred or closer to the odds of getting hit by lightning. Either way, wouldn’t you like to know what bet you're making before you make it? We know we would.
Image Credit: Blog.FreeLotto
