Re: Can We Hit the Lotto Again?
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I've always thought buying multiple tickets was pointless. Lets say it's a huge megamillions jackpot.. The odds of winning, if I calculated it correctly, are 1 in 135,145,920. Is 5 in 135,145,920 really any better? I'd say it's a pretty insignificant change in the odds.
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Well, you have a 5 times greater chance of winning. It's just that to get to a significant level, you need like a 10,000 or 100,000 out of 130 million chance in winning.
The key with the lottery is the "Utility Function". Now, I don't even really know what it means, but I saw someone else mention it and from what I can gather it's that even though the lottery is -EV you can justify it because the result of winning is so life-changing that the losses from playing are reasonable. I'm not sure how you'd use this "Utility Function" in an actual mathematical equation, though - can someone enlighten me?
Realize that this is just the opposite of a common situation in poker - you're in a NL tournament where you are by far the best player. On the first hand, you pick up a flush draw, and someone moves all-in and there is a call behind them. You have the pot odds here to make the call, but the risk of going out when you can win anyways is much too great to justify a call. That's why it can be good to enter -EV situations as well as avoid +EV ones.
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