Michigan Lottery

There’s a lot of confusion out there when it comes to calculating the odds for winning in different lottery systems and games.  The problem is, there’s no on-shot way to figure out all the small variations in the games, but people still want to use the only system they know how, which is usually the “multiply the chance of guessing one number by the next, and the next”.  This works for basic systems, but not all.  Let’s take a look at a basic system.

Our baseline from the Michigan Lottery games will be the Michigan Lottery Daily 3.  A “straight” ticket means you have to pick three numbers, in order, and the pool of numbers continually replenishes itself.  By that, I mean that you could draw a “1″ three times in a row.  When you get into some of the bigger games that’s not always the case.

It’s pretty simple to figure out that our chance of drawing any one of the ten numbers on the first try is 1 in 10, or 10%.  Now, since order maters, to get two correct numbers we need to factor in our chances of drawing the first one correctly, which we already know to be 10%.  Since the chance of drawing the second number correctly is also 10%, all we need to do is multiply the two probabilities by each other to come up with our overall odds, 1 in 100 or 1%.

To continue down the line we simply continue to multiply.  We find our chance of picking the winning number is 1 in 1000.  Pretty good odds in the lottery world.

Let’s look at this another way, though.  If we play the Daily 3 with a ticket called a box 6-way, that essentially means we’ve picked three different numbers and can win if they are picked in any order.  So, a ticket with 1-2-3 will win if 1, 2, and 3 are drawn in any order.  The 6-way comes from the fact that there’s 6 different ways 3 numbers can combine to form a unique group.  If we had four unique numbers, they could combine in 24 different ways.

So the way we calculate order-irrelevant tickets is to find the number of different possible combinations for that set and divide the ordered probability.  For a Daily 3 where order doesn’t matter, that means we start with our probability of 1 in 1000, and divide it by 6, giving us a 1 in 133 chance.

We’ll delve into some more complicated systems in the next post.

Although I can’t imagine that someone would wait very long to claim their winnings if they have a winning mega millions ticket, it does happen.  Just recently there was a $250,000 winner in Michigan who waited three months to claim their prize.  Interesting, but not wise or recommended.  That winning ticket is your lifeline to the money, and that’s it.  If you were to misplace it or it was somehow destroyed you would not be able to claim your winnings.

So what’s the time limit to claim your Michigan lottery ticket winnings?  The answer is one year, and you must claim the ticket in the state where you purchased it (in the case of multi-state lotteries).  So if you bought your mega millions lottery ticket in Michigan, you have to claim it there.  And watch out, if you’re from another state the time limit is different, so make sure to check it out for yourself.

Do you only go out and buy Michigan Lottery tickets when the Mega Millions jackpot rolls over so many times that it makes the national news?  Do you really think you’re doing yourself a favor? Well, the fact is, you’re not.  It might be fun to think about what you’d do with the hundreds of millions of dollars you could win, but what are the odds that not only you’ll win, but that someone else will win along with you?  Obviously, the more press coverage that the jackpot gets the more people play it, which means there’s a great chance of splitting the pot with another, or multiple other, winners.

So let’s look at the numbers.  If you play Mega Millions you have a 1 in 175 million chance of winning from one ticket.  Those are the longest odds in the Michigan Lottery.  Let’s compare that with Euro Millions, which is a 5/50 + 2/9 game – meaning you have to pick 5 correct numbers from 0-50, and 2 correct number from 0-9.  You’re odds of winning on a single ticket for this game are 1 in 76 million.  That’s 10x easier to win than the Mega Millions!

I know, the jackpot is also about 1/10 the size.  But let’s be honest, if you were offered the chance to pick a number from 1-10 to win $10 million, or 1-100 to win $100 million, which one would you go for?  I think most people would try for the 1 in 10 chance to win a lesser amount, because it would still be more money than they knew what to do with.  A bird in the hand (or potentially in the hand, in this case).

Another way to look at it is to ask yourself what a life-changing amount of money would be?  Enough to pay off your HELOC?  Enough to pay off your car, your house, or maybe your student loans?  Think it over and look for a game with the best odds of winning a jackpot of that size.  For some people, winning $10,000 in the Michigan Lottery would change their lives.  Others might look to larger jackpots of $100,000 or $250,000.

So what’s the easiest way to dramatically increase your odds of winning at the Michigan Lottery?  Maybe play a different game.  Classic Lotto 47 is a 6/47 game, and that puts your odds at about 1 in 10 million, with a payout for matching all 6 numbers at around $1.5 million.  Sure, the jackpots aren’t as big, but the odds of winning them are so much higher you could almost convince yourself it’s a sure thing..!