so, if you have a lottery with 6 numbers, and you play once, you have a one in a million chance of winning.

what does that mean?

that means that the number you picked is one out of the million possibilities that might come out. so, if you play twice, you have a two in a million chance. if you play 500,000 times, you have a 50% chance. and, if you play all million numbers, you can't lose.

so, if you have the money to put down on every single possibility, and the payout is higher than it costs to play every single number, that is free money. if the tickets are $2, and the payout is $10 million, you can win an easy $8 million (minus taxes...) by putting down that $2 million investment.

now, consider a system where you can also win if you get three, four or five of the six numbers right. then, you wouldn't only win the $8 million. you'd also win every way you could win - which, depending on the rules, could, in total, be more than the jackpot. but, those rules would also produce duplicates that you wouldn't need to play twice.

if you were a mathematician with a programming background, you could calculate a collection of a few thousand numbers that you could play in order to give you a greater than 50% chance of winning. that doesn't guarantee a win every time. but, it does produce a positive expected value, if you do it repeatedly, and know when to stop.

this doesn't help poor people, because you would need thousands of dollars to put down. and, unless you have a very technical background, you're not going to be able to do this.

but, a broke musician with a math degree might take advantage of this, should they be able to raise the $5000-$10000 necessary to put down on it.

it might be hard to convince the people around them, though. especially, if literally none of them passed grade ten math.