Where it's at

There was no jackpot winner in last night's Powerball drawing, although a player in Pennsylvania did win $1 million with Power Play.  In Missouri, four players matched four white-ball numbers and the Powerball to win $10,000.  The first three tickets were sold at the following locations: 

• Lin-Den Oil in Cuba
• Express Mart on Main Street in De Soto
• Greenville Gas Mart in Greenville

The fourth ticket added Power Play and bumped the prize to $20,000.  That ticket was sold at Circle K, 11011 Bellefontaine, in St. Louis. 

The jackpot for Saturday has grown to $200 million!  Remember, buying multiple tickets does not significantly increase your chances of winning.  Good luck! 

Comments

[Tino]

I'd have to disagree - Buying multiple tickets does significantly increase your chances. Odds of winning Powerball are approximately 1-in-195-million. Buying two tickets reduces the odds to about 1-in-98-million. That's a significant increase in chances.

With that said, buying more tickets increases your chances, but you're still not likely to win.

[Captain Lotto]

That's a common misconception about odds. By your reasoning, the tenth ticket you purchase has a 1 in 250,000 chance of being the winner. But in fact, each ticket you purchase has the same odds - 1 in 195 million of being the winning combination.
Buying more does give you more chances - but doesn't significantly increase your odds of matching the winning numbers. You could buy half of all the combinations - $100 million worth - and still only have a 50/50 shot of winning.

[Tino]

1-in-250,000? No, of course not. If you purchase 10 Powerball tickets, your odds would be 1-in-19.5-million.

[Captain Lotto]

My apologies for misreading your line of thought. I'll stand by assertion though. Each ticket has the same odds of being the winning combination. Your odds would be 10 in 195 million, which can't be reduced because the number of possible outcomes doesn't change.

[Tino]

I'm enjoying this debate. I'd just like to prove that my math is correct. To get the real odds, you take the original odds and divide it by the number of tickets. You proved this yourself when you said that buying half of all combinations gives you a 1-in-2 chance (195,000,000/97,500,000 = 2). That's what I did too: 195,000,000/10 = 19,500,000. That's 1-in-19.5-million chance. If the math holds true for buying half of all combinations, it holds true for 10 combinations. Math is constant, no matter how you apply it.

But, let me give you another example of why my odds of 1-19.5-million for buying ten combinations holds true. If 19.5 million people bought 10 unique combinations each, 195 million tickets would be bought and there would be one winner. One of those 19.5 million people would win: 1-in-19.5-million.

[Captain Lotto]

Indeed. Bottom line, no matter how many tickets you buy, there are still 195 million possible outcomes.
For the sake of argument, let's say "significant" means better than five percent chance of you being the winner. You would need 9 million tickets, correct? Therefore, 10 or even 100 doesn't seem to be a significant increase in your chances.

[Tino]

Of course that's correct. No matter what, if you buy 10 tickets, your odds of winning still are bad.