Regarding the Jumbo Cactpot

I run the same numbers on all tickets. 9947 (no special reason). Every week, since my start. I have played 90-91 weeks.

I call it Bingo/Keno style. All or nothing.

I have won 856k MGP for its worth. My best finish is 3rd, once. I have no idea its thats good or bad tbh.

This style will generate quick big wins or you will be stuck for years.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

With the CPU RNG out of the way, I just want to point out that buying three tickets does not increase your chance to 3/10. Each ticket is a 1/10 chance to get 4th prize.

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If you buy 3 tickets and a different last number for all 3, yes, it does increase it to 30%, but only one of them can win. You have 10 possible last numbers and you have picked 3 of them (3 out of 10). The jumbo cactpot number doesn't change between tickets, it's the same for the whole server.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

With the CPU RNG out of the way, I just want to point out that buying three tickets does not increase your chance to 3/10. Each ticket is a 1/10 chance to get 4th prize.

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It is 3/10 per weekly draw (assuming the last digits of each ticket are different), because "random number matches ticket A, B, and C" are not independent, as you're only comparing to one random number.

Imagine I'm rolling a die, for instance, and you have three guesses as to what number I'm going to roll. Naturally, since 3 of those guesses will be correct for some roll of the die, you have a probability 3/6 that one of them is right.

TBF, even if a different number was drawn for each ticket (so that we are speaking of independent events where you multiply instead of add probabilities), it would be hard to notice the difference over the small sample size caused by the weekly lock: the chance of getting three consolations then becomes (0.9 ^ 3) = 0.729, or a little under 73%, vs. 70% of a triple whiff with the single drawn number. Similarly, there is a (5/6 ^ 3) chance you'd fail to guess any of three consecutive die rolls with one guess per roll (0.578, or a little more than 4/7).

It does explain why fourth prizes seem common and the higher ones are so rare though, as assuming you're betting this way, you're down to one potential ticket for the higher prizes.

(It also explains in part why random pick up groups are such a doggone bone of contention in MMOs too: assuming we replace "winning roll" with the chance that someone doesn't have the necessary know how, and considering the multiplicative property of independent events, it doesn't take too many randos in difficult content before the chance that at least one person is making the endeavor moot from the first gets to be frustratingly high, right?)

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Originally Posted by Sove92

If you buy 3 tickets and a different last number for all 3, yes, it does increase it to 30%, but only one of them can win. You have 10 possible last numbers and you have picked 3 of them (3 out of 10). The jumbo cactpot number doesn't change between tickets, it's the same for the whole server.

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I see what you're saying, but what you're talking about is a 30% of winning 4th prize once. You still have two losing tickets. Technically each ticket is still 1/10. Because the payout for 4th is so low I almost always triple down for jumbo cactpot, but I do get why a player would want to increase their odds for a single prize.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

Yes, the RNG is explicitly rigged to draw a different last number than you specifically have chosen the vast majority of the time. This all despite the fact that the jumbo cactpot number is the same for the whole server.

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HAHAHAHA!

We all know that's only the case with our retainers and the job gear they bring us.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

All jokes aside, if you pick a different last number for all three tickets, your chances to win the 4th prize is 30%. Given you can only play once a week, a 30% rate isn't that great as even on average, you could only be expected to win the 4th once a month, which is pretty much in line with my experience over many years.

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*nods*

I guess 30% seems bigger than it really is.

I recently got the luckiest I ever have with Jumbo Cactpot ever have since it was released. I got 3rd place 2 weeks in a row. It probably won't ever happen again, but I'm feeling pretty satisfied about it, lol.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

I wouldn't worry too much about it. I've been playing the same three numbers for four years and I've never done better than 3rd.

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If you played every week without fail, that's 52 weeks * 4 years * 3 tickets = 624 chances. Crude math would say you have a 0.1% chance of winning 2nd prize on any given ticket. By ticket number 500, odds are you should have seen a 2nd prize winner. At ticket number 624, you are getting outside a standard deviation for the odds.

I'm more annoyed that I've been playing the Cactpot since it's release 8 or 9 years ago and never once won the Jumbo ever. I figured after 9 years I would have won this silly digital lottery at least once but nope.