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0 pointsbryanlarsen10y ago0 comments

Some lottery setups do go to positive EV when the prizes get really large, and I expect that even the powerball would if nobody wins today.

For example, the Canadian 6/49 goes to positive EV at around $40M. But Canada has higher payout ratio, no taxes and no lump sum silliness.

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auntienomen10y ago· 1 in thread

Some do, usually because of some structure in the secondary prizes. In Powerball, the top prize is basically everything, and the likelihood of a split jackpot increases very fast as the jackpot grows.

bryanlarsenOP10y ago

It has nothing to do with the secondary prizes, at least for Canadian 6/49. Most of those are fixed value, so are a increasingly small ratio of total payout as the jackpot goes up.

It's because of those people who bought tickets in the many preceding weeks when there wasn't any winners. Those tickets are contributing to the jackpot, but have exactly 0% chance of winning, increasing the odds of the tickets for the current week.

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