Is Powerball Ever +EV with a high jackpot?

[hick dead]

like right now it's $90,000,000. how high does the jackpot need to be before it becomes +ev. also does the powerplay increase your ev or decrease it?

[astrodon]

The 'pot odds' or the price you are getting from the reward must be greater than the odds against you winning the pot. So, for a 90,000,000 dollar pot you are getting 90,000,000 to 1. Except the odds of winning are very much more than 100,000,000 to 1 against. And even more considering you will only receive half the pot by 'cashing out'. Also, I understand as the pot increases so do the odds against. As far as the power play is concerned it just increases the amount you have invested.

I tend to look at buying a powerball ticket as a 'dollar's worth of dreams'. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[LerkEr]

we call it lottery!

[Lottery Larry]

You rang, sir?

[Lottery Larry]

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And even more considering you will only receive half the pot by 'cashing out'. Also, I understand as the pot increases so do the odds against. As far as the power play is concerned it just increases the amount you have invested.

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1) Not really. I don't know why we don't consider the taxes and other costs in any other wager, but insist on factoring it in so obsessively with lottery pools. Besides, for $90M before taxes, do you CARE about the taxes?

2) Unless you have some weird version of the lottery being played, the amount of the money in the "pot" doesn't change the odds of winning that pot.... unless you're increasing the likehood of a split (which ancedotely is around 20% for the big lottery pools)

3) The powerplay is like insurance in BJ, in that it is a separate bet that has nothing to do with your main wager.

[Lottery Larry]

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like right now it's $90,000,000. how high does the jackpot need to be before it becomes +ev.

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There was a calculation made , 6 months ago or so (I replied in the thread, so maybe search on my name- it might have been the Other Gambling forum, or elsewhere) that the jackpot for the Powerball would have to be in the half-billion range. That would almost guarantee that the cash value prize, minus the chances of splitting and the taxes involved, would end up as a +EV result.

If you want to wait until the lottery pools hit $500M for the first time EVER, feel free.

one could argue that waiting for the cash value to pass the 148M:1 or worse odds could be considered +EV... but you'd rarely get to play then either.

I say, when the annuity passes the odds of winning, it's HUGELY +EV for me to win the jackpot... regardless of what amount I eventually end up with as spendable cash.

Make your own call... but for a few dollars, you can't go wrong IMO unless you're going broke.

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also does the powerplay increase your ev or decrease it?

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Take a guess- do lotteries and bonus features get added because they'll cost the organization MORE than it had been costing them, before the new feature was added?

(answer: only if someone screwed up)

I'd rather spend $2 on two chances at 90M than adding a dollar to give me ~15M:1 chance to win a million dollars... or less, depending on which powerplay factor came up.

[pococurante]

The lottery is always -EV, due to taxes.

[Lottery Larry]

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The lottery is always -EV, due to taxes.

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And other forms of gambling aren't, because they DON'T pay taxes?

[Dorothy Mantooth]

According to the Powerball site, the odds of winning the grand prize are 1 in 146,107,962.00. You would be getting a good price on your money technically when the jackpot hits $146,107,963 with one mitigating factor being that more tickets in groups are sold which might increase the chance of having multiple winners.

[pococurante]

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The lottery is always -EV, due to taxes.

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And other forms of gambling aren't, because they DON'T pay taxes?

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I didn't say that.

I only meant that when you're 10 million to win and the prize is 11 million, it's still -EV. Some people see only the "omg superrare plus EV lottery" and forget about taxes.