How is it possible that no matter how many lottery tickets you buy, your chances of winning are still the same/do not increase?

There is only a limited number of possible combinations. (granted, in this case over 175 million possible combinations.
If you bet on 1 of those combinations, you have a 1 in 175 million chance of winning.
If you bet on 2 of those combinations, you have a 2 in 175 million chance of winning, which is double the probability of just betting on one.
So if you buy 500 tickets instead of just one, you increased your chances of winning by a factor of 500. So in that sense, you do increase your odds by buying multiple tickets.

Mind you, it would still be just a 500 in 175 million chance, so in a practical sense, your chances only improve by a tiny fraction.

“The odds of winning are about 1 in 292.2 million.” (According to PowerBall Commission)

That is the odds of a single ticket winning. That means there are 292.2 million different combinations. If you buy 500 different tickets, there are still 292,199,500 chances.

That rounds to 292.2 million.

Your odds of course get better if you buy more tickets, but from a practical standpoint an improvement from a billion to one to 500 million to one is not the smart way to finance that yacht in your future.

The answers already here are correct.

This is different than the situation you described in your details, but I want to point out one fallacy gamblers fall victim to. The idea that if they’ve bought a bunch of lottery tickets in the past and have never won, that they’re somehow more likely to win in the future. “It has to be my turn this time” – no. If you buy a lot of lottery tickets, you’re more likely to win at some point in the course of your life than somebody who doesn’t buy a lot of lottery tickets, but it makes you no more likely to win any one given lottery.

Thomas Jefferson once said (or so I’ve heard) that ”A lottery is a tax on the willing.” That’s true enough, as far as it goes. (He could have said ”...a tax on the stupid”, but you know what a diplomat he was.)

Apparently, lotteries are also a topic of discussion for the stupid.

The newscast was obviously wrong, and the statements above are all true. If your chances of winning on one ticket are “microscopically slim”, and you buy multiple tickets – let’s say 500! – then your chances ‘improve’ to “five hundred times microscopic”. That’s not much of an increase, but it is “an increase”.

On the other hand, if you’re one of those who thinks that the lottery results are somehow fixed in advance – or if the newscaster was one of those people – then, and pretty much only then, the statement could conceivably be 100% accurate.

We banned all our staff from purchasing lottery tickets, the fake rich are so bloody common.

I think they were saying that no matter how many people play the lotto your chance of hitting the winning number with your ticket stays the same.

Some people think of it like a raffle, which is incorrect. In a raffle tickets that were bought or given out, are in a bowl so to speak. The more raffle tickets you buy/get, the more chances for your name/number to get picked.

In a lottery there is always the same amount of numbers in the bowl no matter how many people buy a ticket. If two people play powerball there is still the same chance of a certain number combination coming up. If two people by raffle ticket they have a 50/50 chance of winning.

A friend of mine likes to say the odds of finding a winning lottery ticket on the street are virtually the same as buying a ticket, so he’ll save his money and keep an eye out.

If you buy 292,199,500 tickets that cover all the possible combinations you have a 100% chance of winning. Just be prepared to split those winnings with 6 other lucky bastards who all bought just one ticket each.

If you buy 500 lottery tickets, your chances are 500 times greater, which may sound pretty good, except that 500 times practically nothing is still really small.

I need to clarify. The odds don’t change per ticket. Each ticket has the same chance to win in the lottery.

Good answer from Cruiser. And even if you bought 1 million tickets (at a cost of $2 million to you), you’d still only have a 1 in 292 shot at the prize. That’s how insane the odds are.

If you are spending $500 three times a year on the lottery, you’d be MUCH better off buying tickets to the various home giveaway charities. The odds are about 1 in 20,000 to win a home or cash equivalent for a $100 ticket. That’s basically a sold out NBA game. A lot better than odds that are equal to the population of the entire USA.