If you were to buy lotto tickets for every single possible combination of numbers...?

Question

how long would it take to actually fill out the playslips?

Answer 1

Oh ffs! Your so sad!!!!!






(28.4 years)

Answer 2

It will all depend on which lottery game you are playing. For instance, a standard pick-3 lotto only has 1000 possible combinations (000,001,002,....999). A pick-4 has 10,000 combinations (0000.....9999). Neither of those would take you more than a day to fill out. Once you get into the big jackpot lottos, possible combinations can number in the hundreds of millions, NY Mega Millions has odds of 175 million to one of winning so one of these lottos could take a lifetime to fill out every combination.

Answer 3

It depends on which lottery you are playing. In some countries there are fewer combinations than others.

I heard of a consortium that tried to do this in the UK one time. There are only 14 million combinations, about 1/10th of one of the American lotteries.

If one person were to try and do it themselves I guess you would need a computer print out of all possible combinations. It would then take about 10 seconds per combination. So on something like Powerball it would probably take about 44 years to fill out the forms. Then of course you have to buy the tickets with the betting slips (and of course the money). The problem is that you only have about three days to purchase 140 million tickets. If you run one entry slip every 10 seconds, it is only to take you eight years to buy all the tickets. By which time you have failed to cover all the numbers.

The only remaining option is to get a bunch of helpers to help you by purchasing all the combinations possible. This would probably allow you to buy all the tickets in time.

Next you have the logistics of checking through 140 million lottery tickets to find the winner, and to find the winners of smaller prizes that would help offset the cost.

But the problem is (as if I've not already covered enough) that you need about $140m to pull this off. The jackpot would have to be over $320m to even come close to making this worthwhile, and if someone gets lucky and hits the jackpot the same time as you, you are almost certainly going to lose money over all.

If you have $140m kicking around, invest it and get a nice $10m-$14m annual return on it. Probably a lot less hassle than trying to win the lottery.

Answer 4

They've actually concluded that even without the playslips, it would be impossible to get a single terminal to print every combination between draws (for the powerball). So you wouldn't be able to do it independently.

Answer 5

You would need to ask the store to stay open 24 hours. And there is a limit to the amount of tickets you can buy at one store. I believe its 100. But if you went to dif stores maybe. But that is beyond retarded

Answer 6

A long time, and it would cost 14 million pounds. Actually sounds like a good idea though, as you would win your money back plus everybody elses. Anyone got 14 million pounds spare.

Answer 7

it would probably cost a few million ( the odds are 1 in 67,108,864 according to Gamblers Anonymous ) & take years as there could be as many as 3 million different combinations.
& could you seriously carry that many tickets, home?

Answer 8

Roughly the rest of your life. Depending on the game and how it works there could be anywhere between around 50,000 to 80,000,000 different combinations. It all depends on the odds of winning.

Answer 9

for the possible combinations i know 1-2 hours

Answer 10

Too long and you'd need to win the lotto because you'd be broke!

Answer 11

haha too long and if you could afford to do that why put the lotto on in the first place, your never gonna make back what you've spent putting it on!