> None of your examples or hand-waving have shown that you can significantly improve the odds of one ticket winning the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot. No

> None of your examples or hand-waving have shown that you can significantly improve the odds of one ticket winning the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot. No one has said that you can improve the odds of one ticket winning. What has been said is that you can improve your expected value of playing one lottery ticket by carefully choosing what ticket to buy. Your expected value is the product of: • The probability that your ticket wins • The value of the prize • 1/(N+1) where N is the number of other people whose tickets have the same numbers as your ticket. The first two factors are the same for everyone. The third depends on the numbers on the ticket because a lot of players do not pick their tickets randomly. For example 1 2 3 4 5 6 is a surprisingly common choice. I've seen several lotteries where they reported afterwards that if that had been the winning ticket the prize would have been shared by several hundred or even thousands of people.