Lottery puzzle

[nightmare]

If you knew in advance which numbers were going to be drawn in the Lottery, what would you do, and why ?

[tboo]

I would buy 100 tickets with the winning numbers on. Then if anyone were to share the jackpot, their share would be greatly reduced.

[anneasquith]

get a ticket, because i want the money !

[maclarencat]

Id buy a ticket then pay off my childrens mortgages. Take my husband back to malaysia for a trip that we cannot do because the insurance is exhorbitant due to his illnesses . Then I would donate to charity. Local childrens homes top of the list followed by people who are not getting the medication they need because the NHS dont fund it. Oh yes and a box of chocs to celebrate

[mike11111]

Quite right - buy as many tickets as you can afford for the reason tboo states.

[nightmare]

Yes, but I would buy significantly more than 100 tickets, just to make sure and be extra greedy.
I seem to remember there being 158 or something jackpot winners in one draw from several years ago.

[mungbeanz]

To guarantee a prize near what you want why not buy 1/9 the amount of tickets with 3 numbers. e.g. if you want a million quid buy 111,111 tickets

???

Profit.

[Prudie]

Just buy 1 ticket. It doesn't matter if you buy a 1000, it won't affect the number of other winners you have to share it with apart from yourself. Either they picked the numbers or they didn't - irrelevant of what you bought..

[nightmare]

Prudie,
NO.
If you buy one ticket and no-one else chooses the winning numbers, you get all the jackpot.
If say, 10 other people choose the winning numbers, you and the 10 others each receive 1/11 of the jackpot total.
If you had bought 1000 tickets, you would then claim 1000/1010 of the jackpot total, i.e. just over 99%.The more tickets you buy, the greater share of the jackpot you receive.

[maclarencat]

Yes Prudie but if you bought 1 ticket and 19 others bought tickets with the same numbers you would only get 1/20th of the prize money but if you bought 19 tickets you would get half the prize money

[maclarencat]

Good job you and I are genius nightmare

[venator]

If you bought more than one ticket with the same winning numbers, the lottery people would smell a rat, and want to know how you got the numbers.

[mungbeanz]

Rats smelled or otherwise, they wouldnt be able to do a single thing about your advance knowledge. Maybe if you were the englineer on Guineveer and loaded set of balls number 3 , you could have your ticket voided, but clairvoyance is no reason not to play.

[Prudie]

Ignore my answer. I've done it on paper and I was completely wrong. Buy as many tickets as you can as long as your outlay ensures you get more than you paid. There must be a point though where the number of tickets you buy reduces your winnings.

[Arti]

Theoretically, Prude, it's never possible to guarantee that winnings will exceed yor stake.

[Arti]

*your*

[Prudie]

Absolutely arti. The more I think about the more deeply mathematical it becomes.

[nightmare]

Prudie,
How do you work that out?
The jackpot is going to be of the order of a few million £s. If you had sufficient money to buy enough tickets to significantly alter the total jackpot fund, why would you be playing the lottery anyway ?
The more tickets you buy, the greater your share of the total. If no-one else gets the winning numbers, you win all shares - 100% of the total.

[Prudie]

How do I work what out? I'm saying for example if you bought £2m tickets then that's £2m off the winnings. If the jackpot was £2.5M and you were the only winner then you would only be 500,000 in profit.
I didn't think the question was anything to do with the reality of having enough money already to make playing the lottery pointless.

[nightmare]

Prudie, sorry.
Having read your last answer properly, yes, there is a point at which your outlay would exceed the jackpot payout.
By law, the total prize fund cannot exceed 50% of the total amount collected from tickets sales. Therefore, you would have to buy more tickets than all the others combined (i.e. over 50% of the total takings) to register a net loss on the jackpot.
However, since this usually amounts to several million £s, why are you playing the lottery if you have that sort of money anyway ?