Talking stocks, trading, and investing in general

[otc]



Chance is blind at each occurrence, mother F***ers. These means all reasonable people do "quick pick."

random is the way to go, but there are ways to optimize when it comes to a mega jackpot like this where a ton of tickets could easily be sold with lots of overlaps.

You are trying to maximize the expected value of your own ticket. Each ticket has an even chance of winning...but if one other person has the same numbers, your expected value is instantly cut in half.

If you pick 1 2 3 4 5 6...I guarantee there are a 100 other people who thought it would be funny if it won...now you get a lump sum of 9m instead of 900m.

Quick Pick is pretty good. Random is better than not-random...but there are lots of crazy people (we are talking about lottery players here) who don't make random picks. Avoiding their numbers doesn't change your odds at all, but it can slightly increase your expected value.

 

[jbarwick]

One car/watch buddy from Facebook said he and his friends have $100K in Powerball tickets. I didn't buy any but with the change to the odds of winning, bigger pots should happen more regularly moving forward.

How about GPRO!

 

[lawyerdad]



Chance is blind at each occurrence, mother F***ers."

That proposition is somewhat controversial in this thread.

 

[Piobaire]



That proposition is somewhat controversial in this thread.

Does anyone here have a "feel" for buying lottery tickets like they do in which stocks to pick and how the market is about to move?

 

[chogall]

One car/watch buddy from Facebook said he and his friends have $100K in Powerball tickets. I didn't buy any but with the change to the odds of winning, bigger pots should happen more regularly moving forward.

How about GPRO!

Surprised if anyone is gambling his own money in GPRO equity after AMBA implicitly announced in December earnings call that GPRO is going to lick, eat, drink, and bath in its own **** for the whole 2016.

 

[otc]

Yeah, bigger pots are going to continue going forward. I will laugh if there is no winner this time...next pot will be insane considering how many people are buying into this one.

I just ran to the convenience store downstairs and put my theory to the test with 5 tickets (one order-form's worth).

Took some random picks that had numbers on the high side (to avoid dates) and compared them to an excel list of historically winning numbers.

Technically with my expected value calculation, those 5 tickets only "cost" $1...I can deal with that....and it will let me focus and get back to work rather than overthinking this ****.

 

[otc]

Also, why the **** have people been lining up places to buy tickets? Is it that hard to find somewhere to buy tickets? I didn't even have to go outside and it was a 30 second transaction with no wait. I could have gone outside and walked to like 50 different places with lotto machines...

I mean, I know the poor rural areas have less places...but really?

 

[MSchapiro]

I'm not convinced the quick pick isn't rigged.

But did it anyway lol. $4 worth of tickets. The big money.

 

[ramuman]

I bought my first lottery ticket ever - my lifetime game-of-chance gambling net is -$1 at a slot machine when I turned 18. Looking forward to +$1,499,999,999 tonight.

Yeah, bigger pots are going to continue going forward. I will laugh if there is no winner this time...next pot will be insane considering how many people are buying into this one.

I just ran to the convenience store downstairs and put my theory to the test with 5 tickets (one order-form's worth).

Took some random picks that had numbers on the high side (to avoid dates) and compared them to an excel list of historically winning numbers.

Technically with my expected value calculation, those 5 tickets only "cost" $1...I can deal with that....and it will let me focus and get back to work rather than overthinking this ****.

You realize some redneck who put no thought into this is equally likely to win.

 

[lawyerdad]



I'm not convinced the quick pick isn't rigged. 

But did it anyway lol. $4 worth of tickets. The big money.

Maybe we can securitize your expected return as a way of hedging the downside risk.

 

[otc]



I bought my first lottery ticket ever - my lifetime game-of-chance gambling net is -$1 at a slot machine when I turned 18. Looking forward to +$1,499,999,999,999 tonight.
You realize some redneck who put no thought into this is equally likely to win.

Yes, but there is a difference between odds and expected value.

Somebody picking 1 2 3 4 5 6 has equal odds of winning as me...but their expected value is significantly lower.

The MIT students who "beat" the Massachusetts lottery, were able to win because the game was poorly designed and with the right choices, you could actually come up with a strategy that had positive expected value in certain instances (in their case, it was actually the secondary, non-jackpot, prizes that were broken). Dump a few hundred k into the game at the right time, and be guaranteed a profit.

Their odds were no different from everyone else...but they only played when their tickets had a positive EV.

And as a disclaimer: I fully expect to lose. Even if the game were +EV (jackpot in the 2b-2.5b range I would guess), your buddies with 100k in the game are still almost certainly going to lose because the chances are so small.

 

[otc]

Also, how did the $100k guys buy their tickets? At that point, I'd start to worry about duplicate tickets and maximizing coverage on secondary prizes. But doing anything other than quickpick would be prohibitively slow.

Expected Value will go up as you reduce the number of duplicate 4-5 ball combinations...$100k isn't enough to guarantee a $50k or $1m secondary prize, but it can get close. And you could technically guarantee at least some $100 prizes and a bunch of $4 and $7...though probably not enough to matter.

 

[lawyerdad]

Too lazy to edit:

 

[ramuman]



Yes, but there is a difference between odds and expected value.

Somebody picking 1 2 3 4 5 6 has equal odds of winning as me...but their expected value is significantly lower.

The MIT students who "beat" the Massachusetts lottery, were able to win because the game was poorly designed and with the right choices, you could actually come up with a strategy that had positive expected value in certain instances (in their case, it was actually the secondary, non-jackpot, prizes that were broken). Dump a few hundred k into the game at the right time, and be guaranteed a profit.

Their odds were no different from everyone else...but they only played when their tickets had a positive EV.

And as a disclaimer: I fully expect to lose. Even if the game were +EV (jackpot in the 2b-2.5b range I would guess), your buddies with 100k in the game are still almost certainly going to lose because the chances are so small.

The game can't be positive EV unless the number of players plateaued while the pot increased. Otherwise, the likelihood of the pot being split n-ways increases to offset the EV.

 

[jbarwick]

Also, how did the $100k guys buy their tickets? At that point, I'd start to worry about duplicate tickets and maximizing coverage on secondary prizes. But doing anything other than quickpick would be prohibitively slow.

Expected Value will go up as you reduce the number of duplicate 4-5 ball combinations...$100k isn't enough to guarantee a $50k or $1m secondary prize, but it can get close. And you could technically guarantee at least some $100 prizes and a bunch of $4 and $7...though probably not enough to matter.

It was a group but how the hell are you going to worry about dupes when you are only buying 50,000 out of 292,000,000 possibilities. I guess if reduced you have something like a 1 in 5,xxx shot at a dupe.