can the lottery be beat?

Answer 1

The syndicate idea (buy every number) could work in theory, but it's much easier said than done. I'll use the New York Lottery Mega Millions game as an example.

First, you need to pick every combination of 5 standard numbers out of 56 and one Megaball number out of 46. The odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in 175.7 million. Thus, to even begin the idea, you need to have more than $175,700,000 in liquid cash.

Second, you will win many of the lesser prizes. However, the lottery doesn't guarantee amounts for most of the larger prizes. If many people hit them (and since you have every combination, there will be many winners of all the lesser prizes) they can decrease the amount paid out on some or all of the lesser prizes. For example, the Mega Millions lottery doesn't guarantee the amount of payouts of anything $150 or higher. Typically this isn't an issue, but since you'll have a ton of winning tickets yourself, never mind others that hit, it will probably be an issue.

Third, say you buy all the tickets and determine that, after all second prize considerations, you need to win $150 million on your jackpot ticket. The stated amount of the lottery jackpot is what you get if you're paid a certain amount for many years into the future. If you want a lump sum payment paid immediately, you get only a fraction of the stated amount. After you consider this and taxes (if you're in the US) you'd need the stated payout to be at least 325 million or so, and probably more. It rarely (if ever) gets to that level.

Lastly, you run the risk of sharing the jackpot. If two people win a 250 million jackpot, they don't give both 250 million, they only get 125 each. Since the high jackpots tend to get many players, this risk is quite high and can ruin you.


Cliff's Notes: Even without considering things like ticket limits and dealing with someone in your syndicate running off with lots of money, this is nearly impossible in most lotteries. Many lotteries only have an expected payout of 33 or 35 cents on the dollar, and it doesn't change regardless of how many tickets you buy.

(Even though I used a large lottery as an example, do the calculations on smaller lotteries. You'll find the same results, just with smaller total numbers for payouts.)

Answer 2

No. The system is based on game math, in this there is a nigh infinite number of random numbers that will appear each time the "balls" are rendered.

Playing the same number or choosing random numbers has no effect whatsoever on whether your number comes up. The chances are still whatever the odds are predicted to be. Sometimes the same numbers can repeat themselves.

The ONLY thing that can effect the number turn out is if the "dealer" has loaded balls. What do I mean by this?

All customer paid lottery picks and quick picks are loaded into and sent to a mainframe computer. That is how they know where the winning ticket was bought.

If the "dealer" (ie the Lottery Organization) wanted to keep the winnings for whatever reason, the computers know what the hundreds of millions of lottery numbers that have been picked are. That same computer also knows what numbers haven't been picked up to the purchase cut off. It would be a simple matter to load the balls, so that only the those numbers that weren't picked would be produced.

Other than that, there is no way to beat the Lottery, unless you have some amazing ESP.

Answer 3

There is no way of beating the lottery but there are ways of increasing your chances. Take the UK national lottery for example. If you play 1 line your odds of winning the jackpot are pretty remote. However if you play 44 lines you can increase your chances of winning by 702%.

This is because you play the same 5 numbers and then the 6th number is numbers 1 to 49. Thus you only have to match 2 numbers and not 3 to win.

Even better on Euro Millions if you play the same number and play all the permutations of the lucky star you can increase your chances of winning by a staggering 3,600%.

However most people would not want to buy that many tickets per week, so the best way would be to get all your friends and family to play with you in a syndicate, however that would be a nightmare as they would not all agree to the same set of 5 numbers or some would not want to play from 1 week to the next.

I have looked around on the internet and found one site that is a member of the Lottery Council that run such a syndicate. I thought I would give it a go and found that I have won more times over the last few weeks than I have in 12 months playing the conventional way. I don't know if this is just a winning streak but only time will tell. I will report back in a few weeks and let you know.

More details of their system can be found at www.betterlotteryodds.co.uk

Answer 4

Professional lottery teams do exist. They wait until the payoff is greater than the cost to buy every combination and then, of course, they buy every combination.

Answer 5

There is a strategy and I've have been able to make tens of thousands of dollars on the lottery.

I won so much money from this video and this program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8kI-A7cL1A

Answer 6

HAHA you cant win teh lottery its random :]

Answer 7

Yes it can if you have enough money to buy all the combinations.

Answer 8

Yes, however...
Many states have a limit to how many tickets you can buy.

Answer 9

YES IT CAN KEEP PLAYING BUDDY DONT LISTEN TO THESE OTHER GUYS