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LUCK CAN WORK
BOTH WAYS
(Posted November 9, 2022) |
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"We're going to be rich!" my wife said when I came
home one night last week.
"That's nice," I replied. "Who died?"
"No one died, fortunately. But I bought a Powerball
ticket." She rubbed her greedy little hands. "$1.5 billion,
baby!!"
This was not like her. She'd never bought a lottery ticket in
her life. But Powerball mania got to her. The largest jackpot in the
history of the country was hers for the taking.
"What should we do with our $1.5 billion?" she
asked. "I'm thinking new curtains for the bedroom."
This conversation occurred last week, before Saturday's
drawing. Amazingly, she didn't win, leaving us curtain-less for another
couple of days. Because the next drawing was Monday night, and the jackpot
had risen to $2 billion.
Clearly, it was time to go all in. She bought four tickets,
at $2 per ticket, and her optimism increased fourfold. Bring on those
curtains.
"I don't understand why you don't buy any tickets,"
she said when she showed me her latest purchase. "It's the
opportunity of a lifetime."
My answer was the same as it had been since California
instituted the lottery back in the 1980's. I figured the chances of me
winning were about the same as the chances of me dying in a plane crash.
As a fearful flyer, I quickly decided I neither wanted to be that lucky,
or that unlucky.
Somewhere in the middle worked just fine for me.
Her enthusiasm, though, got me intrigued. I did a little
research and found the odds of winning the $2 billion jackpot were 1 in
292 million. The odds of dying in a plane crash were 1 in 29 million. In
other words, I was 10 times more likely to die in a plane crash than win
the Powerball lottery. Count me out.
Of course, that didn't stop me from rooting for my wife to
win. I could maintain my philosophy and still share in the wealth, since
it would be community property. I quickly checked the numbers she had
chosen.
"You'll never win with these numbers," I
explained. "You should have gone with family birthdays."
"Shows how much you know," she retorted. "It
decreases your odds to go with birthday numbers because they only go up to
31. You can pick up to the number 69."
That was a head-scratcher, but I went with it because she had
clearly done some research of her own. And my math algorithm skills could
use a little work.
For those of you who aren't aware of Powerball (including me,
until now), you pick five random white numbers between 1 and 69, and then
pick one red Powerball number between 1 and 26. Get them all right and you
win the Grand Prize of $2 billion, leaving 292 million other tickets in
the dust.
You can pick your own numbers, as my wife did, or you can go
for a "Quick Pick," where the computer selects your choices
randomly. Believe it or not, research shows your chances of winning are
exactly the same, regardless.
I didn't believe it. A quick check of the internet showed
that a Lotto website determined the numbers 61, 32, 63, 21 and 69 are the
five most frequently drawn numbers over the last seven years. I was about
to show that to my wife when I saw another website that claimed 32, 39,
22, 41 and 36 were the most drawn.
"32 is on both lists!" I shouted when I made the
discovery. "Go with it!"
She checked her tickets. "Sorry. I don't have it on any
of them."
I took a look. "I can't believe you didn't do more
research. You've got 34 and 26 on some of these tickets. Don't you know
they're the LEAST drawn main numbers over the last seven years?"
"Once again, it shows how clueless you are, "she
replied. "It's pretty obvious those numbers are due for a big
payday."
I couldn't argue with that logic. Unfortunately, she woke up
on Tuesday morning and, just like all but one of 292 million or so other
tickets, came up empty.
She didn't even win $4 for picking the red Powerball, where
her chances were 1 in 26. How could you lose with those odds?
No lectures or gloating from me though. I didn't have time. I
was too busy booking a plane ticket.
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