Am I more likely to win the NYC lottery or at roulette?

[neoliminal]

Given the average payout of the lottery vs. the odds of roulette, am I more likely to win money playing $1 in the lottery or $1 in roulette (and letting it ride until it equals the average NYC lottery payout.)



Please show the math.

[JohnF538]

You are not likely to win money in either of them. You will lose less slowly in roulette.

In roulette, the house has a 5.26% house edge. That means, on average, you will lose $5.26 for every $100 you bet.

Most lotteries have a 50% house edge. The means you will lose $50 for every $100 you bet.

[FAH-Q208]

roulette.....basically, you have a 1 in 20 million chance to win a million dollars ....in roulette you have 18 chances out of 38 to win a red/black oddeven bet for a dollar....bet 2 dollars you have the same 18 out of 38 chances to win 2 dollars..eventually you will run a streak of twenty in a row....and you don't have to wait 2 or 4 days to make another bet...take 400 bucks to a casino....the plan here is to lose 365 dollars and tip the waitress for free booze.... ( i bet for each day in a year compressed into a weekend......figure your own math.....lose 21 bets in a row you are out 21 bucks and a tip for 1 drink...win 21 in a row you got a million fifty thousand...but it might be 2.1 million. i might have missed a bet cuz i did the math in my head..

[Jake361]

you are more likely to win at anything then the lottery. I suggest black jack over roullete but to each his own,
good luck,
jake

[Maquis47411]

You'll lose your money with both options. I suggest getting a basic understanding of statistics and gambling odds before making any wagers.

However if you want true odds then the lottery is the answer. Why? If you spend $1 on a ticket then you have a chance of winning the lottery top prize. Its' a very small miniscule chance, but it's still a chance. See the back of the ticket for complete rules and odds.

On the other hand, if you put $1 on a roulette wheel, you have reasonable odds of doubling or quadrupling your $1, but it would be impossible to "let it ride" up to the multi-million lottery level. You won't find a casino that will let you make a wager that big.

[CB655]

An american roulette wheel has 38 numbers on it, 1-36, 0 & 00.

The payout for betting a number is 35:1 so a bet of $1 will win $35 plus the original bet so you will have $36 total. So if the total is reinvested it will increase as follows


1 win $36
2 wins $1,296
3 wins $46,656
4 wins $1,679,616
5 wins $60,466,176

the odds of hitting the same number 4 times in a row are 38^4 or 1 in 2,085,136; five times in a row would be 38^5 or 1 in 79,235,168.

I'm not familiar with the NY state lotto but they their website has the odds listed at 1 in 175,711,536 with a jackpot around $18 million.

You will run into a problem with table betting limits which are in place to prevent something like this. But I used to deal in a casino and saw a $500 max roulette table hit #32, 6 times in a row and paid out over $35k in those 6 spins.

Neither is a great bet but roulette has the better odds