What are my odds to win Vax-A-Million?

Your chances of the winning the Vax-A-Million drawing all hinges largely on how many people sign up for it.

When the Ohio Lottery opened its Vax-A-Million web site Monday to allow people to put their name in for the first of five million dollar drawings traffic on the site was high, receiving 25 million page views.

That is how many times the site was looked at but not necessarily indicative of how many people registered for the drawing.

Citing security concerns, Ohio Department of Health Director Stephanie McCloud said in a written statement that the exact number of people who registered for the drawing will not be released until next Monday. Instead, McCloud said “hundreds of thousands of people” signed-up for the drawing.

She added that 60,000 people called the ODH Hotline ( 1-833-4-ASK-ODH) where they may have registered for the drawing.

How To Figure Your Odds

Figuring your odds of winning the drawing, according to Adam Hammett, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mathematics at Cedarville University, begins with an estimate of how many people will be signed up for it by the first drawing’s deadline Sunday night at 11:59 pm.

Hammett told News Center 7 that over 4 million people have been vaccinated so far in Ohio, and it would be reasonable to believe drawing registration may be about 50 percent.

“If half of those people end up registering by Sunday which is the deadline for the first drawing, you are looking at one in 2.4 million odds of winning that first drawing,” Hammett said.

After our interview, the Ohio Department of health updated their figures and the state moved to just over the 5 million mark for first vaccinations.  

Using Hammett’s calculation, your odds of winning would still be no higher that one in 2.5 million.

Better Odds For The Scholarship Drawing

Hammett said the odds of winning the first of five college scholarship drawings are much better than the other drawing because fewer people are in the running for the prize.

The latest figures from ODH show there are 209,975 people age 19 and younger to be vaccinated.

Hammett estimates at most about 200,000 of those people are age 12-17 and eligible for the scholarship drawing.

Again, if only half sign up for the drawing, participants would have odds of one in 100,000 to win a scholarship.

Comparing Vax-A-Million To Other Drawings

The Oho Lottery posts the odds for all of its games at its web site, OhioLottery.com.

Their popular “Pick Five” game has odds of one in 100,000. The Mega-Millions game, which has players nationwide, posts odds of one in 302,575,350.

The Vax-A-Million drawing falls in between the two, but still far more remote than your chances of getting struck by lightning.

According to the National Weather Service, your odds of being hit by lightning at some point in your life is one in 15,300.

Why Play The Game?

If your odds are so low, why bother to sign up for the drawing?

“If its something you were going to anyway (be vaccinated) or that you already have done, why not take a couple of minutes and actually go in and register. Go enjoy the process and watch what happens. Who knows? You might end up winning a million dollars,” Hammett said.

Cox Media Group