A Method for Winning at Lotteries

We report a new result on lotteries — that a well-funded syndicate has a purely mechanical strategy to achieve expected returns of 10% to 25% in an equiprobable lottery with no take and no carryover pool. We prove that an optimal strategy (Nash equilibrium) in a game between the syndicate and other players consists of betting one of each ticket (the “trump ticket”), and extend that result to proportional ticket selection in non-equiprobable lotteries. The strategy can be adjusted to accommodate lottery taxes and carryover pools. No “irrationality” need be involved for the strategy to succeed — it requires only that a large group of non-syndicate bettors each choose a few tickets independently.