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

First of all, there is absolutely no guaranteed way of winning the lottery, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. We can, however, look at this from a statistics point of view and get a little perspective.

The Michigan Lottery Mega Millions is what’s known as a 5/56 + 1/46 lottery. The odds of picking the winning number in this system are about 1 in 176 million, or in other words, you’re more likely to be stuck by lightning twice in one day. But by understanding the probabilities and statistics behind the Michigan lottery odds, you can significantly increase your chances.

A Basic Lottery System

Let’s start by trying to simplify things a bit. If you were to buy 11 tickets, you could make sure that you have every number, 1 through 56, on one if your tickets. Leaving the mega ball out of the equation, you would without a doubt have at least one ticket with one winning number on it. Guaranteed. This would cost you 11 dollars – an amount that some people play on a weekly basis anyway. In this scenario, you only have to match 4 other lottery balls and the mega ball. Your odds of winning the Michigan Lottery Mega Millions increase drastically to 1 in 16,895,340. This represents over a 10x increase of your likelihood to win. That’s a huge increase in probability. Granted, you’re still in the neighborhood of a single lightning strike, but you’re getting closer. Let’s take it a little further, though.

Based on statistical studies, the most probable outcome for a Michigan Lottery drawing is three odd numbers and three even numbers. In other words, when everything is said and done, 33% of the time there are three even numbered balls and three odd numbered balls on the tray. Also a lottery result with all non-consecutive numbers occurs just once every other week on average, and you can further increase the Michigan lottery odds by picking tickets with three high and three low number selections. This is also another common denominator in winning numbers over the years.

Finally, one of the biggest advantages you can give yourself is to know what the numbers were for the previous two weeks. The most probable combination will have no lottery numbers from the previous week, and no two numbers from the week before that. This immediately narrows your choices down and gives you some constraints within which to operate. While the odds are still astronomical, they’re not quite as bad as they were to start out with. Apply these tips, and your chance of winning the Michigan Lottery will be higher than ever.

The issue of privatizing the Michigan Lottery has come up several times over the years, and there are compelling reasons on both sides of the argument. In its current form, the lottery provides huge amounts of money to the public school system. And, even if as a percentage it’s a small amount (it’s roughly 6%), it’s still a huge sum of money that would be very difficult to replace – especially in the difficult economic times that Michigan is seeing right now.

The problem is that lottery sales seem to be dwindling. Growth for the past ten years has averaged 2%, with some years actually logging less sales than the year before. In 2003, Michigan Lottery contribution to the public school budget was $27 million less than it was in 2002. Why? Competition, for one. Private casinos are on the rise, along with internet gambling and sports wagering. For another, the Michigan economy is having big problems right now, and that leaves less money for “extras” such a Michigan Lottery tickets.

The issue with privatization is that it would severely limit the future revenues that the state would see from the lottery in trade for a one-time, huge infusion of money from its sale. Some estimates have that number in the billions, while others think more along the lines of a billion without the “s”. Some revenue could be replaced by applying the state sales tax the sale of Michigan Lottery tickets, but it would certainly never reach the level that we currently see.

So the main argument against privatizing the Michigan Lottery is that it’s a bandaid fix to a long term problem. A huge cash influx that could cover budget shortfalls for the next two or three years would get the current government off the hot seat, but we all know it’s only temporary, and we’ll be dealing with the same problem down the road. Except this time, the state will have comparatively little lottery revenue and no lump-sum cash from the sale to fix the problem.

The Michigan Lottery has contributed over $14 billion to the public school system over the past 34 years, and slowing growth or not, that’s a huge amount of money. To raise that magnitude of funding with our 6% sales tax, a privatized Michigan Lottery would have to sell $12.5 billion worth of tickets. Compare that with their 2007 ticket sales of $2.3 billion, run the numbers, and decide for yourself.