| Abstract: | In lotto games, the distribution of k-tuples chosen by participants is not uniform, but the chance of any k-tuple being the winner is the same. The winning categories consist of matching exactly k — i numbers from the winning k-tuple for i = 0, 1, …, m for some m. The total prize pool for a category is divided equally among all the winning tickets in the category. Therefore the strategy of buying a ticket with a k-tuple consisting of unpopular numbers will increase the expected amount of the prize if this k-tuple is a winner in some category, because the prize pool is shared among fewer tickets. By modelling the distribution of 6-tuples chosen by participants of Lotto 6/49 in Canada, the expected return and standard deviation of return can be computed. It is shown that the expected return can be more than the amount spent when the carryover is large, but the large standard deviation means that it would take tens of thousands of years to millions of years for the strategy to have a high probability of yielding a profit. |
