As reported on the front page, Mega Millions is now over 1/2 BILLION. Time to buy my ticket.
As reported on the front page, Mega Millions is now over 1/2 BILLION. Time to buy my ticket.
The estimated jackpot for Tuesday 16 October is 'round about $650,000,000, . . . or perhaps even a new MegaMillions record jackpot.
DonDiego will purchase several tickets today. He encourages otehrs to purchase tickets as well, . . . so as to increase DonDiego's jackpot.
I'm running the pool at work. We donated $98 to the cause last Friday. That put our chances of winning equal to being pulled randomly from the population of the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Hmm, . . . poor old DonDiego will have to buy $100 worth to stay ahead of PJStroh's pool.
So here's the question:
If the odds of winning the jackpot are 1:300 Million ($600 million dollars worth of tickets)... and the jackpot itself is 650 Million....then why cant Warren Buffet simply call up the Megamillions administrators and pay them 600 million dollars for every conceivable combination of numbers? He would win both the main jackpot and all of the partial number combinations down the line.
And that would be more than a guaranteed 50Million profit plus whatever the smaller jackpots amount to.
Is there some kind of law that prevents that?
I will purchase one ticket - that is all that is required to win.
PJStroh writes:
" . . . why cant Warren Buffet simply call up the Megamillions administrators and pay them 600 million dollars for every conceivable combination of numbers?"
Dunno. DonDiego doubts that the Megamillions administrators are equipped or, more importantly, permitted to make such am arrangement. And, indeed, there may be a law prohibiting it.
But it is unlikely that Mr. Buffet, or anyone else would want to buy every combination, because of the possibility of an additional or multiple additional winners, not uncommon when jackpots are this big.
Oh, . . . Oh !
Poor old DonDiego just googled "buying every combination in MegaMillion" and got the definitive answer, . . . with:
__an interesting story of how a syndicate actually succeeded at it - with some luck, . . . once.
__additional reasons why it would be more difficult now, and might even be illegal in some states.
Ref: Forbes
First, . . . the bad news:
Poor old DonDiego did not win the Mega-Millions.
The good news:
Nobody else won it either. SUCKERS !
So the jackpot will be well over $800,000,000 paid out over 29 years for Friday's drawing, . . . or close to $500,000,000 cash immediately !
(Poor old DonDiego likely doesn't have 29 years left to collect $800,000,000; on the other hand, he likely doesn't have enough time left to spend half-a-billion-dollars either. It's a puzzlement.)
Pj you know very little about Warren Buffet! Not sure he would buy a ticket at 100-1 odds let alone 300 million to 1. 700 million does little for his overhaul wealth( sad as that maybe for us to consider).
