If I had 10 dollars to spend on a 1 dollar lottery draw, would I have more chance of winning if I spent all 10 dollars in one draw or bought 1 dollar tickets for 10 separate draws?
Edit:
in terms of lottery definition, you pick 6 numbers from a pool of 49 numbers (1-49), that is classed as one lottery ticket. So each 1 dollar represents a selection of 6 numbers. Across multiple tickets you can pick the same numbers as appear on your previous tickets. If you are familiar with EuroMillions or UK Lotto, it's that kind of lottery.
http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/p/lotterydrawgames/lotto.ftl
Edit 2:
Let me re-phrase the question. The probability of winning the jackpot in the lottery is 1 in 13,983,816.
Would buying 10 tickets for one draw change those odds to 10 in 13,983,816 ? and if so is that better than playing in 10 different draws at 1 in 13,983,816 odds each?
Best Answer
Your expected gains (or rather losses) are the same for both methods. However, if you get tickets for separate draws, there is an ever so tiny chance that you will win more than once, and correspondingly the chance that you will win (at least once) will be an ever so tiny bit smaller.
As an extreme example of this phenomenon, replace $10$ by the total number of tickets in one draw. Then taking them all in the same lottery ensures a win in that lottery, but taking them in all different lotteries does not ensure any win, but might lead to multiple wins.