Lotto quick picks

Cookie_Monster

better odds payout doing it in the bookies, 3 numbers gets you 50+ rather than a fiver

kneemos

zenno wrote: »

But many people still win it.

Millions don't.

Tzardine

Sunhill wrote: »

Well said!
I checked the Irish Lotto website and it seems you have 45 numbers and you pick six. The math here for working out the chances is
(45x44x43x42x41x40) divided by (6x5x4x3x2x1)
which works out at 1 in 8,145,060 -- less than one chance in eight million.
Euromillions: choose 6 from 50 which is
(50x49x48x47x46x45) divided by (6x5x4x3x2x1)
which works out at 1 in 15,890,700 -- or almost 1 in sixteen million.
I think this is the right formula anyway. Been a while since I was in school.

You forgot to count in the lucky stars on the Euromillions which means the odds of winning are roughly 1/75 Million

My name is URL

irish_goat wrote: »

That makes no sense.

Why not?

zenno

kneemos wrote: »

Millions don't.

Of course, but you could still be the lucky one, or the lucky one on lotto plus 1 or 2. Who knows what luck you might have. It's very cheap to do the lotto anyway, but no-one is forced to do it.

zenno

Some people have all the luck, even when they make a mistake...

Ireland’s latest Euromillions winner has said he ticked the wrong number when filling out his slip.

The man, who is remaining anonymous, picked up his jackpot win of over €12.8 million from National Lottery headquarters in Dublin.

The regular player, who becomes Ireland’s fifth Euromillions jackpot winner since the game began here in 2004, revealed he ticked number 32 on his playslip by mistake while filling out his own numbers. “I wouldn’t mind making a few more of those mistakes,” he said.

pharmaton

I'm going to try praying I win and see does that work. I'll let you know how I get on.

BigBrownBear

Odds of winning having paid 4 euro- >8 million
Odds of winning having not paid 4 euro -zero

El Guapo!

pharmaton wrote: »

I'm going to try praying I win and see does that work. I'll let you know how I get on.

I'll light a candle for you too.
But if you win, you have to buy me a car.

pharmaton

El Guapo! wrote: »

I'll light a candle for you too.
But if you win, you have to buy me a car.

I'll start tonight so

kneemos

pharmaton wrote: »

I'm going to try praying I win and see does that work. I'll let you know how I get on.

You'll have to compete with all the other prayers,some of those might even be mass goers.

Prayers won't even get past the receptionist.To get the attention of the big man a pretty spectacular handwritten CV would be needed.Remember no lies...he'll know.

Totofan99

Strituck wrote: »

You forgot to count in the lucky stars on the Euromillions which means the odds of winning are roughly 1/75 Million

Actually, it's even more now that they've added the extra lucky stars. The lucky stars go up to 11 now. So the odds of winning are 1 in 116,531,800!

irish_goat

My name is URL wrote: »

Why not?

How do you define the odds of yourself inventing a lotto machine (which is already invented), your friend getting a job on the lotto and your enemy being a TV boss?

zenno

Mind over matter folks, that's what it's all about. Not that I'm having any luck with this at the moment.

paulbok

I find it suspicious that on the vast majority of quick picks (take a €4 ticket), you have at least 1 number repeated on both lines. The OP has 2 repeating.
I can understand that it is bound to happen statistically wise every so often but not at the frequency it does.

Does anyone who knows probability maths well, know if that has an positive or negative effect on the odds of winning?

I tend to only check tickets every few weeks so have noticed for years that this occcurs, out of 4 tickets, 3 would have repeating numbers.
I pick my own numbers anymore as this peeves me off.

zenno

I've definitely noticed this myself over the years. Also, I'd love to know how the lotto could be fixed because the balls are moving in random within the sphere live on tv, so unless these balls have magnets inside of them all and a computer can stop a ball to come out I don't know, but how would this be fixed is what I'd like to know. Is there magnets in the balls ?. Has the balls been weekly checked for such things ? is there an amazing new way of fakeness involved here ? or is it just paranoia ?.

dubscottie

paulbok wrote: »

I find it suspicious that on the vast majority of quick picks (take a €4 ticket), you have at least 1 number repeated on both lines. The OP has 2 repeating.
I can understand that it is bound to happen statistically wise every so often but not at the frequency it does.

Does anyone who knows probability maths well, know if that has an positive or negative effect on the odds of winning?

I tend to only check tickets every few weeks so have noticed for years that this occcurs, out of 4 tickets, 3 would have repeating numbers.
I pick my own numbers anymore as this peeves me off.

As I said. I find it suspicious that again 2 numbers have been pulled twice.

It was 43 and 44 tonight (Wed the 4th Dec) Like I said. 2 numbers will be repeated over the 3 draws..

Look at past draws.. The same numbers come out in all 3 draws. The odds of that happening are in the billions.

And Sat? I will bet 2 or 3 numbers will be drawn twice. It is a fix.

shane9689

4 8 15 16 23 42

worded

A tax on hope

Consider UK or Irish prizebonds. At least you can save a few bob and still "gamble"

I've mostly given up on the lotto

paulbok

Prizebonds were an alternative but the recent changes (not sure if live yet) have rendered it a poor choice now.
Gov't reduced the prize pool and frequency of jackpots so a pale imitation of what it once was

Caliden

GarIT wrote: »

Why are you dividing by anything, the probability is just the first part I thought.

Yea I didn't get that either...he shouldn't be dividing at all.

1 in 16 million for Euro Millions? That's way off because by the time the jackpot reached over 48 million you could buy every combination and be guaranteed to win.

Vitaliorange

Caliden wrote: »

Yea I didn't get that either...he shouldn't be dividing at all.

1 in 16 million for Euro Millions? That's way off because by the time the jackpot reached over 48 million you could buy every combination and be guaranteed to win.

Imagine there were only 6 balls in the lotto. So there is only 1 combination then. So the odds cant be 6×5×4×3×2×1. Its 6×5×4×3×2×1÷(6×5×4×3×2×1) which equals one.

for every combination there are 6×5×4×3×2×1 permutations of that combination. But order doesn't matter so you divide the number of total permutations by 6×5×4×3×2×1 to get the number of combinations.

y0ssar1an22

I also dont do maths goodly. But the probabilities are interesting....
surely sequential numbers have a lesser likelihood of being picked. For example, drawing a 1 and 2 is less likely (it must be) than a 1 and any other number but 2. I know that is only 2 numbers but does that logic not extend to picking 6 numbers?

ironclaw

zenno wrote: »

I've definitely noticed this myself over the years. Also, I'd love to know how the lotto could be fixed because the balls are moving in random within the sphere live on tv, so unless these balls have magnets inside of them all and a computer can stop a ball to come out I don't know, but how would this be fixed is what I'd like to know. Is there magnets in the balls ?. Has the balls been weekly checked for such things ? is there an amazing new way of fakeness involved here ? or is it just paranoia ?.

Well, watch the lotto carefully.

You see a wide shot of the presenter, adjudicator and then for the rest you only see the machine in a very, very tight, close up shot. There is nothing to suggest the opening shot and the drawing are occurring in the same time frame. In fact, you could play any drawing from a bank of recordings and no one would be the wiser. You also see the ball just 'pop' out in a fairly mechanical fashion, again, nothing to suggest its actually coming from the spinning collection in the top.

Think about it from a business perspective, they know every combination that has been played (The machines do pass this data back to the HQ), so you just select the combination that has a lower payout to more people. 'A friend of a friend' wins a little something and keeps everyone interested. Then have you noticed how it always, always rolls over coming up to bank holidays, Christmas and Paddys etc?

Lotto is rigged in my opinion, can't see why they would want to play fair with all the money involved. Its a business after all and I think anyone in their position, with that much guaranteed income and deposit credit, would have it any other way.

anncoates

I could never fathom why people pick the same numbers every time.

Imagine your numbers came up and you couldn't buy a ticket for some reason.

Bog Standard User

your odd's of winning the euromillions stand at 1 in 76,275,360 per line

anncoates

Bog Standard User wrote: »

your odd's of winning the euromillions stand at 1 in 76,275,360 per line

Your odds of winning it without a ticket stand at fuck all.

okedoke

ironclaw wrote: »

Well, watch the lotto carefully.

You see a wide shot of the presenter, adjudicator and then for the rest you only see the machine in a very, very tight, close up shot. There is nothing to suggest the opening shot and the drawing are occurring in the same time frame. In fact, you could play any drawing from a bank of recordings and no one would be the wiser. You also see the ball just 'pop' out in a fairly mechanical fashion, again, nothing to suggest its actually coming from the spinning collection in the top.

Think about it from a business perspective, they know every combination that has been played (The machines do pass this data back to the HQ), so you just select the combination that has a lower payout to more people. 'A friend of a friend' wins a little something and keeps everyone interested. Then have you noticed how it always, always rolls over coming up to bank holidays, Christmas and Paddys etc?

Lotto is rigged in my opinion, can't see why they would want to play fair with all the money involved. Its a business after all and I think anyone in their position, with that much guaranteed income and deposit credit, would have it any other way.

Are you joking or do you actually believe its rigged. That's some serious paranoia right there.

zenno

zenno wrote: »

Do you know what is really stingy, when you win on one line with lotto plus and you win say €5, and on this same line you win a €3 scratchcard, they only pay you the fiver as it's the higher prise, what a real rip-off.

That's crazy talk. If it was the way you want it to be, then whoever won the thing would also won a load of other prizes at the same time.

If they had all 6 numbers they would also have 5 combinations of 5 numbers, about 16 combinations of 4 numbers and so on.

Akrasia

Aka Ishur wrote: »

Every ball has an equal chance of being picked, so a sequence has statistically exactly the same chance of being picked as your quick pick line.

Ah, but if you do a quick pick, then the same sequence has to be picked out at random, not once, but twice within the space of a few days
Surely that must add an order of magnitude to the improbability?

:P

Akrasia

okedoke wrote: »

or gain a lot of utility from the excitement of waiting for the numbers to be drawn

Which is immediately cancelled out by the crushing disappointment as you only get 2 feckin numbers again

ironclaw

okedoke wrote: »

Are you joking or do you actually believe its rigged. That's some serious paranoia right there.

Just presenting my thoughts on it. Open to interpretation and discussion of course. But it would be wrong, in my eyes, to just accept something that involves such large sums of money and vested interest at face value without at least considering the possibility, with some critical thought, that is rigged.

Akrasia

zenno wrote: »

I just play every week just for the chance of winning a few grand, a lucky lotto win would be nice. I've done the lotto now every week for 16 years with the same numbers 15-16-17-20-28-42 and the most I have won is 57 euro a few times. Yes I've been unlucky, but one day they will come up hehe, hopefully.

If I stopped doing the lotto I'd just spend the money on crap anyway so no loss. If you're not in, you can't win.

There's a lottery calculator on www.entertainment.ie
http://entertainment.ie/lotto/fun.asp
Here is the result for your numbers

If you had played these numbers in one panel every lottery draw since 2003, you would have spent €4,208 and won at least €240.

A potential loss of €3,968
The good news is, with these numbers, your day of luck has still to come.
To date, the highest earning panel entered here by one of our viewers is [4 12 26 27 29 37] which won €18,961,596. The luckiest panel entered here by one of our viewers is [1 3 11 21 28 38] which won 32 times. However, it lost €2,420.

MonstaMash

kneemos wrote: »

It brings home the ridiculous odds of winning the thing.

Apparently you're statistically more likely of being hit twice in the same day by lightning than winning the lotto

Akrasia

BigBrownBear wrote: »

Odds of winning having paid 4 euro- >8 million
Odds of winning having not paid 4 euro -zero

But you get to keep the 4 euro which if you do both draws a week, is €416 a year.

You can get a lot of very nice things for €416 (or half a tank of heating oil)

Caliden

Vitaliorange wrote: »

Imagine there were only 6 balls in the lotto. So there is only 1 combination then. So the odds cant be 6×5×4×3×2×1. Its 6×5×4×3×2×1÷(6×5×4×3×2×1) which equals one.

for every combination there are 6×5×4×3×2×1 permutations of that combination. But order doesn't matter so you divide the number of total permutations by 6×5×4×3×2×1 to get the number of combinations.

Forgot that the order doesn't matter, thanks for explaining it.

Akrasia

paulbok wrote: »

I find it suspicious that on the vast majority of quick picks (take a €4 ticket), you have at least 1 number repeated on both lines. The OP has 2 repeating.
I can understand that it is bound to happen statistically wise every so often but not at the frequency it does.

Does anyone who knows probability maths well, know if that has an positive or negative effect on the odds of winning?

I tend to only check tickets every few weeks so have noticed for years that this occcurs, out of 4 tickets, 3 would have repeating numbers.
I pick my own numbers anymore as this peeves me off.

Probability and Statistics are very interesting things that can seem counter intuitive
For example, there are 365 days in most years, so how many people do you think you would have in a group before two of them shared the same birthday?
The answer is if you have a group of 27 people, there is a 50% chance that two of them will share a birthday.
At 57 people there is a 99% chance.

If you have 6 numbers selected out of 45 possible numbers, so each number should be selected about once out of every 7.5 draws
However, there are 6 numbers in each draw so if you have 2 draws on one ticket, you have a 1 in 3.75 chance that one number will be repeated somewhere on the ticket, and there are 6 numbers on each line, so it's actually much more likely that at least one number will be repeated than to get a ticket with 12 unique numbers

BlimpyBoy

y0ssar1an22 wrote: »

I also dont do maths goodly. But the probabilities are interesting....
surely sequential numbers have a lesser likelihood of being picked. For example, drawing a 1 and 2 is less likely (it must be) than a 1 and any other number but 2. I know that is only 2 numbers but does that logic not extend to picking 6 numbers?

Drawing a 1 and 2 is not less likely that any other combination.

Just say a 1 is drawn first, what number will come out next?

It could be any number. A 2 is as likely to come out as 32 or any other number.

This logic extends to the six numbers so 1 2 3 4 5 6 is just as likely as any other combination.

Naz_st

paulbok wrote: »

I find it suspicious that on the vast majority of quick picks (take a €4 ticket), you have at least 1 number repeated on both lines. The OP has 2 repeating.
I can understand that it is bound to happen statistically wise every so often but not at the frequency it does.

I think this is as expected... Quick calculation on it:

You have 6 distinct numbers in your first line of a quick pick. To find the probability of one of your numbers on your second line matching a number on the first line, it's easier to calculate the probability of all of the numbers on the second line being different:

You have 45 numbers in the Irish lotto, and so you've used 6 on your first quick pick line, so you have 39 numbers that don't match any on your first line. So the probability of randomly choosing a number you don't already have is 39/45. For the second number it's then 38/44, etc, so the overall probability for all 6 numbers being different is:

39/45 * 38/44 * 37/43 * 36/42 * 35/41 * 34/40

= 2,349,088,560 / 5,864,443,200 = .400565

I.e. roughly 40% of the time, when choosing randomly, you will get all 6 numbers on your second quickpick line being different to your first. Therefore 60% of the time at least one number will be in both lines.

tl;dr: chance of having at least one number the same on 2 quickpick lines is around 60%

pharmaton

kneemos wrote: »

You'll have to compete with all the other prayers,some of those might even be mass goers.

Prayers won't even get past the receptionist.To get the attention of the big man a pretty spectacular handwritten CV would be needed.Remember no lies...he'll know.

call is placed in the queue, ticket bought, I'll let ye know on Monday if I win.

joeguevara

y0ssar1an22 wrote: »

I also dont do maths goodly. But the probabilities are interesting....
surely sequential numbers have a lesser likelihood of being picked. For example, drawing a 1 and 2 is less likely (it must be) than a 1 and any other number but 2. I know that is only 2 numbers but does that logic not extend to picking 6 numbers?

You do know that the balls do not know what numbers are written on them. It is just a random ball. The odds for different numbers as opposed to sequential numbers are exactly the same.

Put it this way for 42 balls.

1 ball is picked and it is a 1.

The next ball will come from 41 other chances. Each chance has an equal chance. The number 2 will have the same chance as lets say 39. They are just balls.

Therefore the chances of 1 2 3 4 5 6 =42x41x40x39x38x37

And the chances of 2 9 17 19 37 41 = 42 x 41 x 40 x 39 x 38 x 37.

It just appears that there would be higher odds for sequential numbers rather than seemingly random combintations.

zenno

zenno wrote: »

I've definitely noticed this myself over the years. Also, I'd love to know how the lotto could be fixed because the balls are moving in random within the sphere live on tv, so unless these balls have magnets inside of them all and a computer can stop a ball to come out I don't know, but how would this be fixed is what I'd like to know. Is there magnets in the balls ?. Has the balls been weekly checked for such things ? is there an amazing new way of fakeness involved here ? or is it just paranoia ?.

You can't completely rig it but you could modify some balls to make them more or less likely to come out. Numbers over 42 will be least-picked since 43, 44 and 45 were only added recently, 40, 41 and 42 were also added so they're probably the next least commonly picked and anything over 30/31 will be less likely as they can't be dates of birthdays/anniversaries.