It would take just one other winner to make your $584 million investment unprofitable.

While you can’t stop Uncle Sam from taking his 25% of the jackpot, Wyoming doesn’t have a lottery tax, according to USAMega.com, which tracks multi-state lotteries. Colorado, on the left, taxes 4%.

But first, you have to be a winner. You can be lucky or you can be rich, devious, and very, very lucky. Here’s what I mean.

Theoretically, you could buy every combination of numbers in Wednesday's $1.4 Billion jackpot. It would guarantee you a winner, but, it’s a bad idea. WTVR says at $2 a ticket and with 1 in 292 million odds, you could theoretically buy every Powerball combination for $584 million and still make a big profit.

Taxes aside, the lump sum payout is estimated at about $868 Million, and that makes for a tidy profit of $284 Million profit, if you bought every combination possible.

But the odds are not with you.

There’s only a 22% chance that you would have the only winner. You’re 33% more likely to share the winnings with one other winner, or a 25% chance of sharing with three or more.

It would take just one other winner to make your $584 million investment unprofitable.

Also, Powerball tickets have to be purchased in person. That’s a lot of transactions. Even if you could buy one ticket every second, it would take you more than nine years to buy every combination, filling out each slip, not just getting 292 million quick-picks.

Cornering the combinations is not a new idea. In 1992, an Australian group tried to game a $24 million Virginia Lotto jackpot. But they were only able to buy 2.4 million of the 7 million combinations before time ran out.

So yes, it’s technically possible to get every combination, but it’s just not realistic.

Good luck.

And here’s a chance to get a piece of the action for free, in our Powerball pool.

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