The lottery. The odds.

[rwesty]

It becomes +EV at $100,000,000 if you ignore taxes, multiple winners and the delayed payment/lump sum penalty. I made a quick guess of $150,000,000 after factoring in taxes and multiple winners.

I ignored delayed/lump penalty. I'm guessing that delayed payment is a better deal than taking the lump sum penalty. Lump sum pays out about 60% which makes it necessary for the jackpot to be $270,000,000. I'm going to take a wild guess and say the +EV jackpot amount if you take the delayed payment is less than $250,000,000.

Lump sum might be a better deal if you buy a large amount of tickets that you could write off as losses and save on taxes.

Either way, I start buying at $150,000,000 because the enjoyment I get from that $1 is easily worth it.

[TStoneMBD]

shouldnt lottery tickets be deductible for a professional gambler?

[stigmata]

Some statistician calculated this for the (UK) national lottery, and it was usually +EV on rollover weeks. I forget the details, but essentially if you bought £100 of tickets every time there was a rollover week, by the time you hit the jackpot you would have (on average) died 7 times in a car crash.

[somethingstupid]

At times during the cash windfall (in Boston) it is possible to get 120% return on your investment. I know this for a fact.

[raisethatmofo]

I had a dream last night that I won $3 million. It was such a great dream that I didn't want to wake up. When I woke up, I had this huge let down when I looked around and realized that it was just a dream. That sucked.

You think this could be a sign.

BTW, I played the $50,000 daily 5 or something like that in my stack one year and twice hit 4 out of 5 numbers for $200 payoff each. I was so close. So close twice in fact.

[Monkeyslacks]

Stick it in her pooper!