Guaranteed Win.

The Daily Grand is one of the newer lotteries in Canada.  You pick 5 numbers between 1 and 49, and a Grand Number from 1 to 7.  The grand prize is a thousand dollars a day for life, or a lump sum of seven million dollars.  If two or more tickets win the grand prize the seven million is split between the tickets, and no daily prize is available.  Draws are held on Monday and Thursday.

And I have a strategy that will let you win on every draw.  It's quite simple really.  You just have to play seven tickets for each draw.  This will allow you to play all seven Grand Numbers. and as a result always win, as all you need to win a prize is the Grand Number for that draw.

Can you see the flaw?  I'm sure you can.  You'd need to buy those seven tickets, and each ticket costs 3 bucks.  So you'd be spending 21 bucks a draw to guarantee you'll win...a free ticket, the equivalent of 3 bucks.  Oops.  It gets worse if you did this for both Monday and Thursday's draws.  You'd be spending 42 bucks to guarantee you'll win the equivalent of 6 bucks, with no guarantee you'll win more.  For example the chances of a ticket winning the next smallest prize, 4 bucks, is 1 in 20.

The grand prize seems to be pretty elusive no matter what strategy you use.  If you look at the list of past winning numbers it gives a prize breakdown for each draw.  It seems the grand prize has only been won a handful of times.  The odds of winning are 1 in 13,348,188.