What Are the Actual Odds of Winning a Lottery?

Optimism Bias

This widespread phenomenon is discussed in detail in the article Optimism Bias Can Be Dangerous for Gamblers, but it also makes sense to briefly explain what we are talking about.

In psychology, "cognitive bias" describes irrational human behavior in certain situations. It causes people to act contrary to the common sense. The optimism bias mentioned above is tightly related to it.

It looks like this:

• People believe that they will come across only good events.
• They think the probability of negative consequences of specific actions is significantly lower for them than for others.
• They imagine that mortality, accident, and morbidity rates have nothing to do with them.

As for participation in lotteries, their fans believe they will be lucky enough to win one day (even if they know how small the probability is).

They understand that the majority of people who buy tickets never win.

However, they are indeed more successful than others!

Optimism bias makes gamblers week after week spend money on tickets, which will be thrown away and bring much disappointment.

Perception of Chances of Winning

Psychologists have noticed that people cannot adequately estimate the probability of events that happen pretty rarely. For example, we can hardly imagine the odds of becoming a shark attack victim or dying struck by lightning.

An interesting experiment was carried out by Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist, who was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research concerning psychological techniques in the financial world. The study was designed to demonstrate the irrationality of making low-probability decisions.

Two groups of randomly selected U.S. citizens who were going to visit Europe were chosen for the experiment. Two types of insurance were offered to them.

1. Researchers tried to convince members of the first group to buy insurance that provided payouts in case of death caused only by the terrorist attacks.
2. The second group was convinced to purchase insurance that covered death from any cause (including terrorist attacks, although researchers did not emphasize this fact).

Prices in both cases were equal.

It turned out that people from the first group were buying insurance much more actively, although their conditions were much less favorable. The probability of becoming a victim of terrorist attacks was low, but experiment participants succumbed to emotions and could not assess the likelihood realistically.

The exact mechanism is active among those who are buying lottery tickets. The probability of winning is minimal, but the jackpot size has an effect comparable to those provided by news informing about the terrorist attacks. Having been impressed by the number of digits, gambling fans want to try their luck.

What are Your Chances of Hitting a Jackpot?

Approximate odds of winning Lotto 6/49 are1:14,000,000.

Do you know what you need to do on average to become its owner? If we talk about weekly draws with $1 tickets, you would need to spend $1,000 every weekend for 270 years.

To be sure, you think that this statistic does not apply to you, and you will beat millions of other candidates!

To illustrate this fact, we want to provide you with some odds of different events:

• To be born with six fingers on each hand– 1:500
• To win an Oscar - 1:12,000
• To become a supermodel's boyfriend – 1:88,000
• To be killed in a plane crash – 1:350,000
• To become an Olympic champion – 1:650,000
• Die due to a dog bite – 1:700,000
• Die slipping in the shower– 1:800,000
• Become an astronaut – 1:13,500,000
• And, finally, to win a lottery – 1: 14,000,000!!!

Exciting calculations are provided in John Hay's book Taking Chances. According to statistics, a healthy middle-aged male's probability of death in the next year is 1:1,000. Thus, the odds of dropping dead within one hour are 1:9,000,000.

This means that if you buy a ticket one hour before a draw, you would rather die than become an owner of the jackpot!

So, why do we get in line to purchase lottery tickets? This happens due to optimism bias that makes us ignore the probability of winning and prefer illusive chances.

What Should a Smart Gambler Do?

The answer to this question has already been published on the pages of Casinoz in different variations:

Search for the most profitable gambling games.

We are talking about those featuring the highest RTPs. In addition, you have to choose games following your skills and financial capabilities. If you want to play blackjack or video poker, you must know how to play, which is not so easy.

That's why we recommend that beginners should choose more simple games that do not require special skills. For example, some video slots provide a payback of  98% (this number does not exceed 50% in lotteries.)

If you want to chase a jackpot, you should prefer any slot machine with progressive jackpots released by any of the well-known companies. You can run one-dollar spins once weekly, imagining you are playing a lottery. This will allow qualifying for the jackpot and the accompanying payouts, credited in numerous ways.

To sum up, we want to emphasize that all games of chance should be treated responsibly. Remember that you wager your own money instead of virtual chips.

Take the time to read articles on Casinoz. They will teach you how to choose the appropriate game and select the best strategy.