You have seen lottery jackpots worth hundreds to millions of dollars won by a group of people. Imagine winning just a fraction of a large lottery, a lottery pool can fulfill that dream.
What is Lottery Pool?
A lottery pool is a way of increasing your
odds of winning by purchasing a large number of lottery tickets with a group of people. from a technical standpoint, a lottery pool increases your chance at winning in exchange for a smaller portion of the jackpot. A group of people combines their money (or “pools” their money) to buy lottery tickets and if they win they split the prize money!
How does it work?
Consider a simple example: there are 50 members in your office lottery pool. Each of your co-workers chipped in a dollar and the pool purchased 50 $1 lottery tickets. Suppose one of the tickets hit the jackpot and wins a prize of $50 million. For the $1 buy-in, the lottery participants had 50 times the chance of winning 1/50th of the prize value.
As you can see, running a lottery pool can involve some math and it is best to keep the lottery pool simple. It is often best to have everyone contribute to the same amount of money to the pool. If you let some people buy more “shares” of the pool than others, it can become difficult to distribute the money.
Are lottery pools beneficial?
No matter what you do, you can never be sure of winning the jackpot. But lottery pools do increase your chance of winning without increasing your risk of losing. There are some lottery pools that have been big winners in the past:
- Reports state that the Mountaineer 26 lottery pool managed to score a million-dollar jackpot after trying for almost 20 years.
- Once, an office lottery pool at Quaker Oats of 20 employees won a jackpot of $241 million.
- A 7-person office lottery pool at New York State’s division of housing and community renewal in Albany split a $319 million Mega Million jackpot in March 2011.
Summary
Before entering a pool, check with your local laws to see if they allow pools. Playing the lottery is gambling and federal law doesn’t prohibit lottery, but individual state laws can. Also, do not form a lottery pool without your company’s permission, doing so might violate your workplace regulations. Lottery pools are for fun and entertainment, try keeping it that way with simple and transparent rules. Make a written contract before forming a pool or read the rules carefully before entering the pool. Claiming your pool-win can be complicated sometimes,
read here. Play and Win!
