We have seen some examples of extremely large numbers of possible tickets in Lotto games. For Lotto Texas there are 15,890,700 tickets, for PLUS Lotto, 3,838,380. It is important to know how those large numbers apply to you, the ever-optimistic Lotto player.
Consider a distance analogy. Think of 15,890,700 inches. There are 63,360 inches in one mile. Dividing 15,890,700 by 63,360 we get 250.8. So selecting the winning ticket at random for Lotto Texas is equivalent to randomly picking out a preselected inch over a distance of 250 miles.
Want an area analogy? The area of Africa, the second-largest continent, is about 11,500,000 square miles, roughly 20 percent of the total land area of the Earth. Consider this game. A large map of Africa is on the wall, with one square mile highlighted in red. You, blindfolded, are to toss a dart at the map. The chances your dart will hit the highlighted square mile are much better than your chances of randomly selecting the winning ticket in Lotto Texas.
What about decks of cards? A standard, high-quality Poker deck (52 cards) is about five-eighths of an inch thick. Think about PLUS Lotto with its 3,838,380 possible tickets. Divide 3,838,380 by 52. We're looking at 73,815 Poker decks. Multiply by 5/8, obtaining 46,134.375, the number of inches in our pile. Divide by 63,360, and we must imagine a deck of cards that is 0.728 miles high. Drawing a playing card at random from a deck that is over seven-tenths of a mile thick is equivalent to randomly selecting the winning PLUS Lotto ticket.
Here's one last example. Suppose I want to print out all the possible 6-number combinations for Lotto Texas, all 15,890,700 of them. I will do it in one column down the page, using single spacing and Geneva font, 9-point size. With 1-inch margins at the top and bottom of the page I can get 54 combinations (54 six-number tickets) per page (9 inches of printing). The entire printed list would require 294,273 pages. Let's take that idea a little farther. Suppose I clip the margins, obtaining pages only 9 inches long with printing from top to bottom. Lay all those pages end to end and you would have an unbroken, single-spaced list that is 41.8 miles long.
By now you must realize what you're up against when you play Lotto. No one who buys only a few tickets per drawing should seriously expect to win the jackpot. And buying lots and lots of tickets is also counterproductive in view of the relatively small size of the jackpots compared to the number of possible tickets (and the usual rule that multiple winners must split the single jackpot). So you'll be all right if you keep your bet small and never expect to win the jackpot. Of course you are buying the ticket in the hope that you will win the jackpot, and that's just fine. But don't expect to win it. Let it (winning) be a nice surprise.
I don't remember who, but a very intelligent observer of the human condition once said:
The greatest thrill in the world is gambling and winning,and the next greatest is gambling and losing.