megamillions

bought tickets for the first time in years.

 

If someone wins.....can I have a million?

 

never bought a lottery ticket before, but I was at the grocery store today, so I thought I might as well pick one up

 

I picked up one ticket as well. If you're lucky you only need one ticket with one set of numbers!

 

With the odds being 170,000,000 : 1, it's actually +EV to buy a ticket, unless there are multiple winners.

 

LOL...i just wondered about that during my dinner 10 minutes ago.

 

Or... buy 170,000,000 tickets... HMMMMMM

 

that still doesn't prevent multiple winners.

 

Ive thought of that idea (buying all combos) for a long time, and ive read that there wouldnt be enough time for the machines to print out all the tickets between drawings.

and you'd have to have the 100+Million to spend haha....and pray noone else won

 

Net expected value is positive. I was thinking an you start a company buy all possible tickets claim all the tickets as expenses and then just pay taxes on the profit made?

 

Group Invests $5 Million To Hedge Bets in Lottery

 

You have to play to win, so buy at least one ticket. Beyond that there isn't much point.

 

I bought three of my own numbers. Three quick picks.

The quick picker and I chose the same megaball. You know what this means, right?

It means that number won't come up.

 

I said if it hit 300 million, I would buy a ticket. It hit 300 million, I bought a ticket.

 

the lump sum is 224.2M and everything i've read says it's taxed like regular income which is 35% for the top bracket i think so that only (lol) leaves 145.7M. nonetheless, i decided 145.7M isn't too shabby and i bought a ticket.

 

so who won?

 

<!-- http://twitter.com/news4buffalo/status/22503540081561600 --> <style type='text/css'>.bbpBox22503540081561600 {background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/profile_background_images/13746871/twitter-bgrnd.jpg) #080707;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}</style> <div class='bbpBox22503540081561600'><p class='bbpTweet'>If you didn't catch the Mega Millions live drawing, the winning numbers are 4, 8, 15, 25, 47 and the Mega ball was 42. Good luck!<span class='timestamp'><a title='Wed Jan 05 04:04:47 +0000 2011' href='http://twitter.com/news4buffalo/status/22503540081561600'>less than a minute ago</a> via <a href="http://www.hootsuite.com" rel="nofollow">HootSuite</a></span><span class='metadata'><span class='author'><a href='http://twitter.com/news4buffalo'><img src='http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/1201957370/4-wivb1_normal.jpg' /></a><strong><a href='http://twitter.com/news4buffalo'>WIVB News 4 Buffalo</a></strong><br/>news4buffalo</span></span></p></div> <!-- end of tweet -->

 

Isn't your plan instantly screwed if one or two other people hit the same numbers?

 

Surely somebody won, right?