Does this increase your chances of winning the lottery?

[seriousplayer]

I've seen many people are dreaming of winning the lottery. The odds for playing the lottery is 100 time worst if not 200 times worst than blackjack. There was a colleague I work with he brought 40 lottery tickets for $5. He was planning to play as a team each. Since he is getting more lottery tickets for less money does that increase his chance of winning the lottery? Will 40 tickets be to small of a number?

[zengrifter]

User is banned, content deleted.

[seriousplayer]

Are you serious, seriousplayer?

zengrifter don't get confused I was not involve in playing the lotteries with him. I was just curious to see what are the odds. I don't play lottery.

[bigplayer]

I've seen many people are dreaming of winning the lottery. The odds for playing the lottery is 100 time worst if not 200 times worst than blackjack. There was a colleague I work with he brought 40 lottery tickets for $5. He was planning to play as a team each. Since he is getting more lottery tickets for less money does that increase his chance of winning the lottery? Will 40 tickets be to small of a number?

You are 40 times more likely to win with 40 tickets than one ticket. Don't get your hopes up.

[Tom]

As mentioned, it all depends on the odds and prize of the odds given. Typically, lower odds (1 ticket) = lower return (prize).

Example:
Buying 40 tickets for a prize with odds of 1 in 400,000 brings your chances to 1 in 10,000.
For prize odds of 1 in 4,000 it becomes 1 in 100, etcetera etcetera.

The lottery retains 50% which is why they only pay lower prize odds at half.

[Frostbyte]

The trouble is they usually have a 50% or higher HE so if you win you will about break even in this scenario. Some lotteries periodically meet a required payback for a time interval and that payback to hit the target is a plus EV lottery. The MIT lottery team specializes in lowering the variance enough to cash this lottery consistently. One of the variance lowering techniques is buying hundreds of thousands of tickets.

The MIT lottery team specializes in lowering the variance enough to cash this lottery consistently. One of the variance lowering techniques is buying hundreds of thousands of tickets.

MIT lottery team

Of course they would have one of these. While I'm sure the requisite cash cushion is substantial (even proportionally low variance has a huge impact at that volume), that actually sounds workable. Anything you can share about this organization or the math involved?