Has anyone ever figured out if you take out all the sequential/zero likelihood combos--1-2-3-4-5-6, 2-3-4-5-6-7, 2-4-6-8-10-12, 1-5-10-15-20-25-30 etc? Have to imagine that has to be about 100 million of the combos.
No idea. The first is easy - there are 66 combinations of consecutive integers starting with 1 up to starting with 66 if you’re not counting the Mega Ball, but only 20 if you do count it. You could do similar things for any pattern. If you’re including the Mega Ball there’ will actually be very few possibilities, since it only goes up to 25.
Does this mean that, in theory, one of the Shark Tank guys could buy every possible winning combination for +/- $605M and essentially 2.5x their money overnight?
No, because chances are someone else would also win, and they would have to share the prize (that didn’t happen this time, but the expected number of winners when the pot gets very big is certainly greater than 1). Also, it’s not physically possible to buy 300 million tickets in a feasible amount of time. If it only takes 1 second to buy a ticket it would take more than a year to cover all of the numbers.
You also have to take out federal, state, local taxes and the annuity factor. The $1.6 billion nets about $550 million lump sum cash.
I lazily misinterpreted what @DHarris52 meant about doubling the money, thinking in terms of $302 million in costs, but of course what you're saying is true - you're putting up $2 per ticket, so the total amount you would get after taxes even alone is less than what one ticket for each number would cost.
If there is one thing I WILL not tolerate, it is a lazy mathematician. Not when billions are involved.
If you spent $605M you would only owe taxes on the net. Though they would initially take 25% off the top you would likely get much of it back. Lump sum of $900M less $605M cost, leaves $295M taxable. They would take $225M off the top for taxes, leaving you $75M net and at tax time you would get about $107M back if you figure approx. 40% tax rate. Gambling $605M on maybe a 25% chance of being the only winner to net $182M and 75% chance of losing a few $100M
