How to win the lottery
Buy a ticket. That's the only thing that gives you a chance, and buying more of them is the only thing that raises it. Every other method you'll be sold is about the numbers, and the numbers don't care.
Every ticket is the same ticket
A Powerball draw takes five white balls from 69 and one red ball from 26. Count the ways that can come out and you get 292,201,338 combinations, which is the jackpot odds Powerball publishes. The lottery odds page shows the sum. Each of those combinations has exactly one chance in 292,201,338 in every drawing, whether it's 1-2-3-4-5 with a Powerball of 6, your children's birthdays or a quick pick.
The balls have no memory. A number that came up last week is no likelier and no less likely this week, and a number that hasn't come up in months isn't "due". People who sell number systems lean on charts of hot and cold numbers, and those charts describe the past accurately and the next draw not at all. In a fair draw they can't do anything else.
I spent a career pricing outcomes that were hard to call. This one isn't hard. Every combination is priced the same because every combination is the same.
More tickets, in a straight line
The only thing that changes your chance of the jackpot is how many different combinations you hold. Ten different plays in one Powerball drawing are ten chances in 292,201,338, and the cost goes up exactly as fast as the chance.
| Plays in one drawing | Cost at $2 | Jackpot chance |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $2 | 1 in 292,201,338 |
| 10 | $20 | about 1 in 29.2 million |
| 100 | $200 | about 1 in 2.9 million |
| every combination | $584,402,676 | certain, and you may still share it |
Spreading the plays over time works the same way. One ticket a week for 50 years is 2,600 plays and $5,200, and it gives you about one chance in 112,000 of hitting a single Powerball jackpot along the way. Playing the same numbers every time or new ones each time makes no difference to that. A pool buys more combinations with other people's money too, and splits the result, which the lottery syndicates page covers.
Who you'd share it with
Here's the part you can actually control. If two tickets match the jackpot, the two winners split it, and Mega Millions says so in as many words: "In the event of multiple jackpot winners, the jackpot prize will be shared." Your numbers can't make you likelier to win. They can make you likelier to win alone.
A lot of players pick dates, and dates only run from 1 to 31. Of the 11,238,513 ways to pick five white balls from 69, only 169,911 use nothing above 31. That's about 1 in 66 of the combinations, and it's where the birthday players are all crowded together. Patterns on the play slip, runs like 1-2-3-4-5 and last week's winning numbers draw crowds of their own.
So I'd take the quick pick. It doesn't improve the odds of winning by a single ticket. It just keeps you out of the most crowded corners, and if the jackpot ever does come, there's a better chance it's all yours.
The prizes below the jackpot
The second prize is the one people forget, and it's far likelier. On Powerball, matching the five white balls without the red one pays $1 million, or $2 million with Power Play, at 1 in 11,688,053.52. That's 25 times as likely as the jackpot. On Mega Millions the same match pays $2 million to $10 million, depending on the multiplier printed on your ticket, at 1 in 12,629,232.
Those prizes are fixed amounts, so they aren't split if someone else hits the same tier on the same night. California is the exception: both games say its prizes are pari-mutuel, set by sales and the number of winners. The multipliers page explains what Power Play and the Mega Millions multiplier do to them.
What you spend
The cost is the one number fully in your hands, and it's the one I'd fix first. Powerball is $2 a play (Power Play is extra) and Mega Millions is $5 a play with the multiplier included. Mega Millions says 50 percent of its sales go back to players in prizes, so on average every $10 you spend comes back as $5, and most players do worse than the average, because the average counts jackpots that almost nobody hits.
I don't think that makes a ticket a mistake. It makes it entertainment with a price. Decide what the price is per week, buy that, and stop. If you find yourself buying more because the jackpot got bigger or because you're "close", the responsible gambling page is the place to go.
Systems for sale
Somebody will always sell you a way to win. It comes as a book, software that "analyzes" past draws, a wheeling plan or a pattern in the results, and none of it changes the count above. A wheel, for example, is a way of buying many combinations built from a set of favorite numbers, and its promises are about the small prizes you'll collect if enough of your numbers come up. The chance of each combination is the same as ever. You've just bought more of them.
The Federal Trade Commission's line is the one I'd remember: "If you have to pay to increase your odds of winning, it's a scam." The same page says it's illegal for someone to ask you to pay for that. The other tricks aimed at players are on lottery scams.
If it ever does come up, what to do if you win the lottery has the order of things. Until then, the honest system is the cheap one: a quick pick, a budget, and no money spent on anyone's secret.