Michigan Lottery

From a statistical standpoint, this game gives you the greatest odds of winning.  Think of it as the blackjack of the Michigan Lottery.  A straight ticket (match the three numbers that are drawn, in order) gives you a 1 in 720 chance of winning.  Let’s look at a few ways to increase your odds and spend your money wisely.

Eliminate One Number

The payout for a straight ticket is $250.  You won’t be quitting your day job, but it’s nothing to scoff at.  If we take the approach of ensuring that we have at least on number right, we’ll need to buy 10 tickets that have each number, 0-9, in one spot once. To put it another way, we buy our first ticket with a 0 in the first position, our second ticket with a 1 in the first position, and so on.  At $0.50 each, we’ve spent $5.00 on our plan so far.

Let’s look at the numbers now.  Since we know we have one number right, we only have to match the other two (in order).  That puts our odds at 1 in 100, or in other words we’ve increased the probability that we’re going to win $250 by 7.2 times by spending an additional $4.50.  If we look at it from the standpoint of marginal gain, each additional $0.50 is buying us just shy of a 1x greater probability of winning.

Box 3-Way

Another ticket you can play in the Michigan Lottery is the box 3-way.  That means to win you still need to match all three winning numbers, but order no longer matters. So buying a 1-2-3 ticket, you’ll win with 1-2-3, 2-1-3, 3-1-2, 1-3-2, 3-2-1, and 2-3-1.  Just taking order out of the equation gives you an immediate boost to your odds of winning, which are 1 in 120.  The ticket is still $0.50, but the payout is significantly less at $83.  If you use the same method outlined above and eliminate one number, your odds rise to an impressive 1 in 45.

Eliminate Matched Numbers

If you look at the Michigan Lottery results, almost 70% of the Daily 3 winning numbers are unmatched. This means that picking 0-0-0 or 1-1-1 will significantly reduce your odds of winning.  Or, if we take it a step further, picking unmatched numbers will increase your odds of winning. Combine this little nugget of information with your box betting and number elimination and you’ll be well on your way to winning the Michigan Lottery