The Euro Lottery has rolled over to an astounding £105 million with an estimated jackpot of £125 million on the following Friday.
The way it's played is with 5 balls with combinations from 1 to 50 and 2 additional 'lucky' balls from 1 to 9.
I've been calculating odds of winning if you were to cover all permutations of the lucky balls. Essentially, to get one ticket with 2 lucky balls correctly selected will require 37 combinations.
Now onto the 5 main balls, the maths to calculate the probability of getting all 5 numbers correct is as follows : (50 !) / ((45 !) * (5 !)) = 2,118,760 1 in 2.1 million chance of winning £125 million with an initial purchase costing £55 (37 tickets covering all lucky balls). If somebody were to buy all permutations, it would take £117,591,180 = 2118760 * 37 * 1.50 (£1.50 per ticket) Essentially, they'll make a profit if they're the only jackpot winner. Of course, that multimillionaire would'nt even bother about the lottery anyway if they had that much money. I might though, if only to be recorded in history for the "Lottery Gambit"  |