A lottery dream makes sense on the surface. Life gets hard, money runs low, and the thought of one ticket changing everything feels almost reasonable. But the math does not bend for hope. The odds are fixed, and they do not negotiate.
People who play consistently spend more than they ever get back. That is not pessimism. That is what the numbers show, game after game, draw after draw.
The email below came from someone I will call Boris, not his real name. He was in a genuine financial crisis and wanted me to give him winning numbers for four different lottery systems. I am sharing my response here because I think Boris is not alone.
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A letter from someone chasing a lottery dream
Dear Edvin,
My financial situation is inadequate and I live in a country with the highest inflation in the world. My situation is very bad and I want to win big in the lottery to save myself from financial misery. Could you share some good numbers for the 6/60, 6/90, 5/34 and 10/80 systems? I heard that you are a good person. I’m sure many people write this way, but I’m real. Please help me, please 🙁
I just want to try my luck. I have enough money to buy your calculator right now, can’t I buy it from you with a credit card for a fee? Come on, are only rich people entitled to try their luck? I am someone who works in the field of finance, I know how to manage my money, don’t worry.
A reality check on odds and expectations
I can hear how hard things are. I want to be straight, even though the honest answer is not what you are hoping to read.
Nobody can predict the next winning combination. Not me, not any calculator, not anything sold online with a bold promise attached. Lottery draws are random. That randomness cannot be predicted or influenced from the outside. If I handed you “good numbers,” I would be selling you something that simply does not exist. And that is the last thing someone in a real financial bind needs.1
The math on this is not complicated. The expected value of a lottery ticket is negative by design — the game returns less in prizes than it collects in ticket sales, on average. Hitting small prizes along the way does not change that. The gap between what goes in and what comes out stays negative over time, regardless of which numbers you pick or which system you follow.
The math behind the lottery dream
Take a look at this calculation of the expected value of the Powerball game. The odds against a jackpot are so extreme that no number selection method comes close to narrowing them in any meaningful way.
No matter what lottery game you play, the expected value is always the same. Let’s use one of the games mentioned in the letter: the 6/90 game. There are 622,614,630 possible combinations. One wins the jackpot. A single ticket gives you a 1 in 622,614,630 chance. That fraction does not move regardless of which numbers you pick or what system you follow. The only variable under a <a href=””>lottery player’s control</a> is how many combinations they hold, and that costs money.
Playing multiple games simultaneously multiplies spending without multiplying jackpot probability in any single game. The total combination space across separate games does not merge into a unified pool — each game operates with its own independent odds.
The lottery winner illusion
Winner stories get covered heavily in the news. Psychologists describe this as the availability heuristic — the tendency to judge the probability of an event by how easily an example comes to mind. Heavy media coverage of jackpot winners makes those outcomes more mentally accessible, which inflates perceived probability beyond what the actual odds support.
You asked whether only rich people get to try their luck. Anyone can play. The question the math raises is a different one: the probability of a negative return is the same regardless of a player’s financial situation. The game does not adjust its odds based on what a player can afford to lose.
Lottery vs Investment
Some people play the lottery as a form of entertainment, with a fixed, discretionary budget — money they have already accounted for as spent. That is a different financial situation from using money needed for other purposes.
The expected value of the ticket is negative either way. The difference is what the loss means to the player’s overall financial position. Lottery is just entertainment. It’s not an investment.
Regulated financial instruments — stocks, mutual funds, index funds — are a separate category of activity with a different probability profile. They carry their own risks and no guaranteed returns, but broad market index funds have historically produced positive average returns over long time horizons — a fundamentally different structure from the fixed negative expected value built into lottery ticket sales. A lottery ticket is not a financial instrument in that sense. It does not accumulate value between draws.
Responsible gambling guidelines generally describe lottery participation as entertainment, not income or investment. Budget limits and spending within discretionary income are the standards those guidelines reference. The math does not tell anyone what to do. It does describe how the game is built and what the long-run probability of a positive return looks like.
Frequency Asked Questions
No. Every lottery game is built with a negative expected value, meaning the total prize pool is always less than total ticket sales. Over the long run, the average player spends more than they receive back. Lottery play is a form of entertainment with fixed odds, not a financial instrument.
In practice, no. Lottery games are structured with a negative expected value. The organizing body retains a portion of all ticket revenue. Individual players may win prizes, including jackpots, but the mathematical structure of the game does not support lottery play as a reliable income source.
Playing multiple games at the same time multiplies total spending. Each game operates with its own independent odds — playing across several games simultaneously does not improve jackpot probability in any single game.
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