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Occasionally, a large jackpot can return a positive average payoff, if it's powerball style and they accrue from round to round. However, the odds are so astro
by tunesmith 13y ago
Occasionally, a large jackpot can return a positive average payoff, if it's powerball style and they accrue from round to round. However, the odds are so astronomically against any one ticket winning, that it would still be considered gambling. If a billionaire could risk enough of their fortune to gain a high probability of getting that winning ticket and therefore making an overall profit, then perhaps it would be investing from his perspective, but if you or I blows our $50k emergency fund and still has a 99% chance of losing it all, it's still gambling.
- T-hawk 13y agoThis strategy fails because multiple winners would split the jackpot. If one billionaire sees a positive return in buying up the entire probability space to get the jackpot, he must assume that another billionaire would also come to the same conclusion. No player can assume they're the only one applying the strategy; they each must assume the jackpot will split until a ticket is no longer positive value.