Will you let the machine place your bet?
As the Powerball jackpot swells to $1.7 billion after no winner was declared on Wednesday night, some experts are suggesting that players should not to use one of the game’s most popular features.
Quick Pick — which allows lottery computers to randomly pick the numbers for players — is very popular, with around 70% to 80% of players using the feature when they buy tickets, according to a Powerball.net report.
But lottery expert Dawn Nettles warned that the machine algorithm is flawed, with the system capable of spitting out duplicate numbers — which could increase the likelihood of sharing the big prize.
To avoid this, Nettles said there was only one tried-and-true way to improve your chances of hitting the big jackpot and getting all to yourself: pick out the numbers by hand.
“Sit down and fill out a play slip,” she told the Daily Mail.
Nettles, who has long fought against the use of computer-generated numbers in lotteries, added that the machines are incapable of noticing patterns, like in Texas, where she said that 90% of Quick Picks tend to skew towards big numbers.
The Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), which runs the Powerball, told The Post that the chances of getting a duplicate Quick Pick number “are the same odds as matching the winning numbers.”
A single ticket has a 1 in 292.2 million chances of winning.
“You have a higher likelihood of having a duplicate ticket when you choose your own numbers, because of human bias,” the lotto group said in a statement. “We see a lot of players choose significant milestones, such as birth dates and anniversaries, when selecting numbers.
“Keep in mind, there were 162 million tickets sold for last night’s Powerball drawing. So, there’s still the chance there could have been a duplicate play,” the group added.
The MUSL’s own data has previously shown that “roughly 80% of Powerball jackpot-winning tickets are Quick Picks,” given that so many rely on the system.
Jared James, the founder of the LottoEdge analytics site, noted that of the 79 jackpot winners in the last 10 years, only 5% of them have ever shared the big prize.
“Even if there are duplicate numbers being generated by the machines, it’s not prevalent enough to cause worry … or represent a huge risk,” he said. “Any number combination has an equal chance of winning the jackpot.”
James added that the combination pool is extremely vast, with only 58% of the total possibilities picked out by players during Wednesday night’s drawing.
Tim Chartier, a lottery expert and mathematician at Davidson University, agreed that the chances of the machine picking two identical tickets is extremely small, but not impossible.
“In life, we can be random. But computers are pseudo-random, and, while algorithms exist that emulate randomness, it is still tricky,” he said.
“So, yes, picking your numbers [yourself] is a strong idea if you are wary that you need randomness on your side and some luck when the balls enter the chute!”
