Originally Posted by
DemonGeminiX
How many draws per week? That 39 draws for $1m, is that 39 unique numbers you get to choose for the $1m in a single draw apart from the $70 million lottomax? Or is it 1 play per draw for free repeated over 39 draws? How does that work?
Without actually computing anything, everybody, mathematician or not, would tell you that it's not worth the cost. And they're usually right. Even an old guy that spent over $300,000 to win a jackpot had to do it twice before he won. That's $600,000 in two draws. And he could have easily lost the second time.
7/49, out of one pool of numbers, assuming no repetitions allowed: 49 x 48 x 47 x 46 x 45 x 44 x 43 = 432,938,943,360 possible lottery numbers. You're picking 1 for $5. Is one of those numbers a "powerball"? In other words, it comes from a separate pool, a la choose 6 from one pool, and choose 1 from this other pool, introducing a possibility for a repetition? How do you hit the $1m?
I had an idea a while back to track numbers drawn over time and get rid of them out of a master list, and also get rid of similar numbers and other "wouldn't be picked candidates" (for example: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), but then I found that the lottery corporation changes ball pools infrequently, but enough to make that approach useless. You'd still have to spend something like $500,000 to have a reasonable chance of hitting it.