Lottery multiple tickets

Hi, new to this forum - very interesting. I've searched for similar questions but cannot find anything so apologies if it's hidden away somewhere.

In a 59 ball lottery with 6 number tickets and 3 winning the smallest prize, occasionally, the prize fund is shared throughout the winners even when the jackpot is not won. In these draws, assuming the jackpot is not won (doesn't happen that often), the smaller prizes become much more worthwhile - 3 to 5 times more than normal.

During these draws, I am buying 25 tickets using different combinations of the same 15 numbers. What are the chances of selecting 3 or 4 of the winning numbers within the 25 tickets whilst appreciating that my ticket combinations still may not create a winner?

Thanks in advance.

never won lotto it is impossible

First you need transportation to the state lottery office if you win millions of dollars. Not sure Uber is gonna drive anybody 3 hours each way. Wouldn't trust a police escort either.

Clearly not impossible. It happens quite a lot.

However, that was not my question. I wanted to know the chances of selecting 3 or 4 of the 6 winning numbers within my 15/59 number selection for the lesser prizes.

My strategy took me up to over $400 net profit (is there any other sort?) in the first half of the year but now it has dropped to $150 and I'm wondering if I was initially lucky and now the odds are catching up with me although I did miss out on a $500+ win when the jackpot was won that week so limiting me to only a $120 win.

Quote: ChumpChange

First you need transportation to the state lottery office if you win millions of dollars. Not sure Uber is gonna drive anybody 3 hours each way. Wouldn't trust a police escort either.

I had an Uber driver last week that had a fare from Las Vegas to Newport Beach California. It was 270 miles each way.

Quote: DRich

Quote: ChumpChange

First you need transportation to the state lottery office if you win millions of dollars. Not sure Uber is gonna drive anybody 3 hours each way. Wouldn't trust a police escort either.

I had an Uber driver last week that had a fare from Las Vegas to Newport Beach California. It was 270 miles each way.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000813748/article/shareece-wright-takes-932-uber-ride-to-bills-facility

Nine hours. Not that bad a price either. Car rental probably would have been $300. So he paid about $600 to be able to sleep. Career earnings are about $13 million

Welcome to the forum, GeeDee.

Guys, stop hijacking the thread with the Uber nonsense, please.

It's a math problem, though somewhat complex. It's also a system that is likely doomed to fail in the long run. The house edge on lotto is insanely high, so I don't think even multipliers on the lower numbers will save you in the long run. However, I don't have the math skills to reliably back up what I'm saying. Perhaps a more skilled math guy will Calc it out.

Or perhaps (unlikely IMO) you do have an edge, with the multipliers. If so, all you'll likely get will be crickets. And maybe a couple PMs asking where you're playing.

Quote: beachbumbabs

Welcome to the forum, GeeDee.

Guys, stop hijacking the thread with the Uber nonsense, please.

It's a math problem, though somewhat complex. It's also a system that is likely doomed to fail in the long run. The house edge on lotto is insanely high, so I don't think even multipliers on the lower numbers will save you in the long run. However, I don't have the math skills to reliably back up what I'm saying. Perhaps a more skilled math guy will Calc it out.

Or perhaps (unlikely IMO) you do have an edge, with the multipliers. If so, all you'll likely get will be crickets. And maybe a couple PMs asking where you're playing.

speaking of lottery numbers, I wonder how Nathan's Lottery predictions have been doing as of late, don't you?

This one is hard to answer as it definitely depends on just what 25 sets of numbers are on your tickets. Assuming your 15 numbers are 1-15, there are 66 possible tickets that all have 1,2,3,4 on them.

There is a long-standing math problem concerning how many tickets you need to buy in order to guarantee that at least one of them will have 3 of the drawn numbers.

Thanks BBB. I was wondering what I had got myself into.

I do appreciate that I'm not buying enough tickets to guarantee my 1,2,3,4 selection in every one.

Last week, I had three numbers but not together on 1 ticket and so no win. Previously, I had four numbers but only with 3 selected on 4 winning tickets. Unfortunately, that was the week the jackpot was won and so I only ended up with "normal" wins - very annoying. Another week and I thought I would be "clever" by selecting all the numbers which had occurred least over the years (on the basis that if you measured these things for long enough they should all equal out) but if I had kept my original selection, it would have been another $500+ win!

I did have a go at trying to work out the odds but my relatively limited maths failed me. If anyone could do this, I would be very interested especially if a tweak in my settings (more or less numbers selected) would improve the odds but this is where it gets very complex.

Don’t lose sight that my question was not how the combinations would win but what are the chances of selecting 3 or 4 winning numbers when choosing 15 out of 59 numbers. That must be possible for some bright spark. :-)

I shall keep going, at least while still in profit so at least another three attempts.

Thanks

Quote: beachbumbabs

Welcome to the forum, GeeDee.

It's a math problem, though somewhat complex. It's also a system that is likely doomed to fail in the long run. The house edge on lotto is insanely high, so I don't think even multipliers on the lower numbers will save you in the long run..

An update.

Whilst I haven't received an answer to my question, I thought I would report that I’m still in profit of $300 having entered all the roll down draws since my post except one which I missed as they’re not regular. They’re every two or three weeks on average with normal draws running twice a week.
Of course, sods law says the only one I missed happened to be the one which would have given me a decent win of nearly $1,100 on 4 of my 15 balls (6 x 3 ball wins and 1 x 4 ball win) so somewhat frustrating.

On the basis my strategy seems to be working overall having run it for 2½ years with the same $50 number set since my first post I’m thinking of upping my stake with a few more numbers and more multiples.

Go Big or Go Home.

Quote: GeeDee

Whilst I haven't received an answer to my question

Well, I did some simulation after finding a set of 25 tickets all with only the numbers from 1 to 15 where 353 of the 5005 possible sets of 3 numbers from 1 to 15 appear on at least one ticket, and I got:
At least one ticket has at least 3 numbers in the draw 1 out of every 7.4 draws
At least one ticket has at least 4 numbers in the draw 1 out of every 103 draws

Here are the 25 tickets:

1	2	3	6	7	13
1	2	3	8	10	13
1	2	6	8	9	15
1	3	4	6	9	11
1	3	5	10	11	12
1	3	8	11	13	14
1	3	9	11	13	14
1	4	12	13	14	15
1	5	6	9	14	15
1	6	7	9	10	14
2	3	4	7	9	12
2	3	5	10	11	14
2	4	7	8	12	13
2	5	7	8	13	14
2	6	11	12	14	15
2	9	10	11	12	13
3	4	5	6	12	13
3	4	5	7	12	14
3	4	5	9	10	15
3	4	8	9	11	12
3	6	7	8	12	15
4	6	7	8	14	15
4	7	8	9	10	11
5	7	8	9	13	15
7	8	10	11	13	15