Quick pick is OK for when you buy just one ticket, but as soon as you buy more than one its a waste of money because the machine could randomly pick the same numbers on multiple tickets. Then you'd win multiple times and have to split the prize with yourself.
I would assume the odds of getting the same numbers on a second ticket are the same as winning the lotto
Not a good answer. You'e playing on the long shot that you'll hit miniscule odds in your favor, but you're ignoring miniscule odds against your favor?
I'll give you a better answer, which is what happened to my office pool (which I didn't participate in). They collected $10 each from 40-50 people. They wanted to maximize their median return from the non-jackpot prizes. The way to do that would be to spread out your selection of the red powerball numbers as evenly as possible. They got lazy though, and ended up quick picking most of them, leaving a very lumpy distribution of the 26 red powerball combinations. Natrually, they only ended up having 2 tickets with the correct red number, and got a total of $8 in secondary prizes (on $400-500 of tickets).