College Football Picks | NFL Predictions | Free Sports Picks » Lottery

The Math of Gambling

Jack Jones — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:52:24 +0000

Gambling and mathematics have always been closely linked together. A new article from New Scientist explores some interesting examples of how using math can help you beat the odds at the Casino. Here are some of the highlights.

Roulette - Remember that guy that sold all of his possessions and put everything he owned on one spin of the roulette wheel? Well, this is sort of like that, sort of. What the article advocates is what I would call a “chase” system. Basically, you pick one color and bet it with $10, for example. If the bet wins, great, bet $10, however, if the bet loses, double your bet to $20, if that one loses, double that bet to $40, and on and on until you win your original bet back. The idea is that you have about a 50 percent chance of winning on each spin (slightly less if the wheel has a zero and/or double zero), and that probability says, so long as you have deep enough pockets, you’ll always eventually win your initial bet back. I would keep in mind that most casinos have table limits to try to guard against this to an extent, but it isn’t a terrible idea, anyway.

Blackjack - According to the article, using basic card counting can increase your odds to win at blackjack by up to 5 percent. The strategy is pretty straightforward. Start at 0, then add 1 when you see a low card (2-6) and subtract 1 when you see a high card (10s, face cards, and aces), and don’t add or subtract anything on 7-9. When you total gets high, you increase your bets, likewise, when you total falls to the low end, you’ll want to decrease your bets or find another table. The idea is that you will increase your probability of receiving high cards when your total is highest, increasing your chances to win.

Try these strategies out by playing roulette and blackjack online at Bodog Casino.

Lottery - This idea isn’t so much to increase your chances of winning the lottery, but to maximize your winnings if you should be so lucky as to hit the lottery. The concept here is that you want to pick numbers that aren’t commonly used. The number 7, for example, is a no-no because it is so common. The article also suggests staying away from numbers between 1-31 because people often pick the numbers in their birthday for the lottery. The purpose of this is to avoid sharing your winnings if you do win the lottery. You’re odds aren’t very at winning to begin with, so why not make sure you are the only one getting paid if you do win?

Be sure to check out more of our articles on black jack advice and roulette strategy.

State Lottery Payouts

Jack Jones — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:44:48 +0000

There are probably more people that play state lottery games than anything else, so let’s take a look at these state lottery payouts. I recently saw a case where the state lottery had a jackpot of nearly $24 million dollars. A nice number for sure, but there were two individuals lucky enough to have all of the numbers and they ended up splitting less than $5 million a piece. Let’s take a look at why this is.

Most Trusted Online Casino!

In general, to win the grand prize in a typical Lotto game you buy a dollar ticket, and then correctly match six numbers drawn randomly from, for example, forty-nine numbers. This is called a 6/49 game. The probability of any one ticket winning the jackpot in 6/49 lotto game is one in 13,983,816.

Lottery agencies typically fish out 50 percent of each dollar wagered, some of which covers expenditures, but the rest is turned over to the state for civic-minded programs like education.

So for our example above with the $24 million payout, the state grabs half of that figure right away, leaving the other half for cash prizes, including smaller cash awards for matching fewer than six of the numbers. What you’re left with is roughly $10 million for winning a 14 million to 1 bet. If around 20 million people were playing the game that week, it is probable two people would win, splitting that pot, which in your illustration was $5 million apiece.

How Long to Claim Mega Millions Jackpot Winners

Jack Jones — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:53:47 +0000

There are some people out there who seem to misplace their Mega Millions lottery tickets for quite some time. This is not a practice recommended by casino expert Mark Pilarski, as he explains to a reader who noticed while cleaning an old purse the she had $10 worth of Mega Millions lottery tickets she purchased last year in California. After checking out a web site and finding out they were not winners, she was still curious about how long she had to redeem them had she won anything, and what would happen if no one came forward to claim the big MEGA Millions jackpot.
If a jackpot prize is not claimed within the required time limit, in this case 180 days, each of the participating states in the MEGA Millions game gets back all the money they contributed to that jackpot. The 12 states where the game is played, California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington, each use unclaimed prizes for different purposes. Since tickets were purchased in California, their portion of the unclaimed MEGA Millions jackpot prize would go toward public education.

Advice on Picking Lottery Numbers

Jack Jones — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:42:13 +0000

If you haven’t noticed, it seems like a high portion of the jackpots that get hit are split by more than one winner. This is especially true if the jackpot gets up there in the hundreds of millions. Now we can’t really give you much advice on how to beat the odds and pick out the lucky numbers, but we do have a few tips on how you can make sure you put yourself in the best spot to be the only player collecting when your numbers do get called.

So how do you make sure you are the only one called? Pick the numbers that nobody else picks. That might seem like a tougher proposition than it really is if you think about it. Think about how many people just go through and pick birthdays and anniversaries of their friends and family. Obviously these numbers are 31 and under.

Another tip is to not play a numeric sequence such as 34-35-36-37-38-39. Believe it or not there was once 50,000 players who put 1-2-3-4-5-6 when the jackpot was enormous, and while it didn’t hit how unfortunate if you would have hit to get an extremely small share when you instantly think massive riches.

Don’t play rows, columns, and diagonals as this is another favorite of players.

So, keep most of your numbers above 31 and in no certain order and you’ll increase your chances of being the sole winner if you do hit the jackpot.