Finding good bets in the lottery, and why you shouldn't take them
Aaron Abrams, Skip Garibaldi

TL;DR
This paper establishes a criterion for positive expected returns in large lotteries and demonstrates that optimal strategies involve minimal investment in such tickets, highlighting the limited attractiveness of lottery bets.
Contribution
It introduces a new criterion for positive expected returns in lotteries and applies elementary portfolio analysis to recommend minimal investment strategies.
Findings
Positive expected return criterion for certain lotteries
Optimal strategies involve very small lottery investments
Lottery tickets generally not attractive for large investments
Abstract
We give a criterion under which the expected return on a ticket for certain large lotteries is positive. In this circumstance, we use elementary portfolio analysis to show that an optimal investment strategy includes a very small allocation for such tickets.
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