1. You’re (really) bad at math. Let’s look at the numbers. In a “standard” Lottery, say 6 balls from 1-50, the number of possible combinations is C(50,6), or roughly 16 million. That’s not so bad, you think, and you’d be right, but these kinds of lotteries rarely get into the rarefied air of the $50M or $100M payout, exactly because there are so “few” combinations. Replace that last ball with a “bonus ball” of 1-30, and now you’re at 30*C(50,5), more like 63.5M combinations (bonus balls can be the same number as any of the other balls, which greatly increases the number of possibilities). How’re those odds looking now? Well, what if the payout is $100M!? That’s still a good bet, right? It would be, if you got to keep it all. At today’s tax rates, and taking all the money up front (which you’d be really bad at math not to do), you end up with only 30% of the payout. I could go into how easy it is to get 2 or more winners on the same set of numbers, cutting your jackpot even more, but I think you get the point. The Lottery is so very rarely a “good bet”.


2. You hate trees. Again, let’s look at the numbers. According to “Lottery Wars”1, Lottery business in 2008 was $60 billion (with a ‘b’). Let’s be generous and call it $10 per ticket sheet and 6 sheets per page of paper. A “standard” 128 cu. ft. tree converts to about 10000 sheets of paper (an average of several sources, I’ve found counts of 9k, 11k, etc.). So $60B in tickets turns into about 100 thousand trees… in one year! Ok, so they probably use some portion of recycled paper, but even if that removes 90% of the trees, it’s still a large body (log) count. So if you aren’t hip to the green, Lottery’s a pretty good way to kill some off.


3. You are an extreme optimist. Are you one of those people where the glass isn’t just half-full, but cut from a single diamond? Go ahead then, play the Lottery expecting to win. Alternatively, and with a slightly better chance of success, you could follow the next short guy in green you see to find his treasure. How about digging in your backyard for the Lost City of Gold, or even betting your friend that you’ll be struck by lightning … twice? These all seem to have similar chances of success.


4. You really want to help [insert Lottery beneficiary here] only, not so much. Some people like to justify their Lottery purchases thinking, Well, it helps the schools, or some such. Unfortunately, according to “Lottery Wars” again, on average less than 1/3 of the money collected by lotteries goes to the beneficary organization. Furthermore, in some cases (such as the California school system), this money is not treated as a windfall, but replaces money that is redirected elsewhere in the budget. You might be better off just buying some supplies for your local school.


5. At last, we come to the only really excellent reason to play the Lottery: to have fun! Lottery tickets make decent presents, especially for those people you don’t actually want to give anything, but feel obligated to spend money on. They also make great conversation topics. Run out of things to say to your spouse? Buy some tickets and regale each other with how much fun you’ll have together if you win, or even apart after the divorce you can now afford. Dreaming about vacations, home and car renovations, and gifts to loved ones is the biggest value from buying a Lottery ticket. Enjoy!


The Count

1. The Lottery Wars, by Matthew Sweeney
2. Lottery on Wikipedia

People from all over the casino turn in $2 and a card containing their marks for the next game and the computer’s same 20 chosen spaces are played against all of them. Note that the more spaces the player marks, the more spaces must match in order for the player to win. In this example, the player chose 6 numbers, then hoped for 3 or more of those number to match. Please note the marked increase in the payout as the number of matches increases, this is what first got me interested in the game. I also wondered how the computer could control the total payout (in some cases a player can win over $100,000) when so many people are playing, and the computer must pick the same 20 numbers. I knew there was no way a casino would run a game where the odds weren’t in their favor, so I set out to determine the actual probabilites involved.



Problem: Given a Keno game as previously described, what is the probability that, of the X number of marks a player makes, Y of them are matches?


A helpful way to look at this problem was to reverse the order of play. The computer marks 20 numbers randomly (and secretly), and the player then chooses his X numbers, trying to pick those that the computer has already marked. We then break the problem into two parts: finding the probability of getting Y matches, and then of getting (X-Y) non-matches.


Notation: Before I get into the formulae, let’s go over some notation briefly:

These are fairly standard math constructs, further discussion can be found in any Linear Algebra text.


Probability for Y matches:
The probability of the first match is fairly easy to determine. Basically, the player has a 1 in 4 (20/80) chance of picking one of the 20 computer marks. As we continue however, it is imperative to keep previous choices in mind. The probability of the next match is 19/79, then 18/78, etc. Combined, the chances of Y matches are: MatchProb(Y) = M(j=0,Y-1)((20-j)/(80-j)) which, through a little algebra, can be converted to: MatchProb(Y) = C(20,Y) / C(80,Y)


Next to be determined are the chances of the non-matches. This is similar, but the fact that we’ve already made Y choices cannot be forgotten. The probability of the first non-match is 60/(80-Y). The numerator is the number of possible choices that are non-matches, and the denominator takes into account the fact that there are only 80-Y choices yet available after all the matches have been made. The probabilities for the next non-matches are 59/79-Y, 58/78-Y, etc. Combined, the probability of (X-Y) non-matches is: NonMatchProb(X-Y) = M(j=0,X-Y-1)((60-j)/(80-Y-j)) which, again with the algebra, can be converted to: NonMatchProb(X-Y) = C(60,X-Y) / C(80-Y,X-Y)


By multiplying these two functions together, we get the probability that the player will choose Y matches, and then (X-Y) non-matches, when making his X choices. Unfortunately, we don’t care what order the matches come in, so we have a little more work to do. The formula for finding the number of ordered sequences that can be made from multiple pools of equal items is:

In this case there are only 2 pools (matches and non), so the formula is: X!/(Y! * (X-Y)!). This just happens to be C(X,Y). Given this final factor, we can now offer a solution to the problem above: KenoProb(X,Y) = C(X,Y) * (C(20,Y) / C(80,Y)) * (C(60,X-Y) / C(80-Y,X-Y)). Finally, even more algebra can convert this to something a bit easier to read:

We can now take the payout table from before and find the payout percentage by multiplying the payout by the probability of the match. As shown here, the average return on a $2 bet would be about $1.20, roughly a 60% payout. I ran this on all the payouts tables on a Keno sheet from a casino (which shall remain nameless) and came to the staggering conclusion: Keno is not a good bet. The best payout I found was picking only one number, with a probability of match at 25% and a payout of $6 for a $2 bet, for a 75% return. Good luck!


The Count

1. Keno on Wikipedia