By the way, only Lottery Post offered the information about the prize payments in its news story.  I have not seen one other news story anywhere that printed this information.

They told us 400 million jackpots when WA state joined. What a load of you know what. It is neat that Lottery post is the first to get any real info on this.

I really hope they change the game now or it will never get a decent jackpot.

The article was very interesting. And the part about the pay-out was one of the first things that stood out for me. I don't care for that part but we are used to to it with all the other games.

So, thanks Todd for the real info that we won't be seeing anywhere else.

  i feel a little bitter about moving back to california from georgia now  (jk)

  how long before the first tix are sold do you think?

  vision

Hey welcome back to regular posting Vision. It will probably happen after mega finally goes up to 300. You could always drive up north to washington though, since there is no income tax yet (until the dead vote for it)

thanx diva.

everytime i see your screename "diva",  i immediately get a visual of debra wilson on MAD TV doing an impersonation of witney huston where she throws up her arms and yells "DIVAAAAAAAAAAA".  makes me laugh everytime.

washington would be a long drive for tix,  but saving several million dead benjamins  in tax on a big jackpot win just about makes sense.

when i lived in georgia i used to drive to the south carolina border for powerball tix when the "jack"  got juicy.  but that was a 1 1/2 hours drive instead of 1 1/2 days (lol).

dumb question #1;  doesn't a person who wins in washington, have to actually be a "resident" of washington in order to qualify for that juicy no tax bennie?  i suppose i could throw a tent down next to "bills" place on lake washington if i had to.  wouldn't be a bad place to pull "duty" for 6 months...

20/20

Quote: Originally posted by four4me on February 9, 2005

---

Look Todd the last person I want to debate with is you about this, anything can happen at any time. There are literally thousands of people who fill out there play slips with numbers that could break the bank so to speak> Like 5 10 15 20 25 and any combination there of. Maybe it wouldn't cause it to go broke but the possibility exists for it to be pushed to it's limit. With millions of potential like numbers being bet and hitting. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't. 

 

Congratulations for being the first to post the latest breaking lottery news story.

---

        Remember , when on the east coast...somewhere ..when 13 people hit the jackpot...I think the winning numbers where  33  34  35  36  37      or something like that.  It was just this past late summer.

Either jackpots will be huge, or there will be so many tickets sold jackpots will be won before they can get huge. We will see.   

I think we will see jackpots grow faster, but if California kicks in with big sales I also think it will mean the jackpot will not roll as often and we will not see the $100 million jackpots very often at all.  If that continues for very long, I'm sure Mega Millions will change the matrix to make the odds longer.  I guess that would be ok, I like the excitement that is generated by a big jackpot.

My predictions are that MM will raise the minimum jackpot, the jackpots will grow much faster, the jackpots will definitely get into the $100 million range as often as they do today, and they will not be forced to make changes to the game's matrix.

But I guess no one knows for sure until it happens!

With the whole paramutual debate.....it is stated in the Mega Millions rules now that they will not pay our more than 300% of sales or more than $50,000,000 more than sales which ever is greater (or is it less)  So yeah if those numbers did come up they would end up being para-mutual anyway.  But I mean California even has there Pick 3 as para-mutual.  What is up with that.  They are the biggest state but only fifth overall.  It must be not a lot of people play the lottery over on the west coast.  Michigan has more winners in their pick 3 than does California and they have over 3 times the population.

Brad

Brad:  I agree with you.  I am not a fan of pari-mutuel payouts on lottery wins.

For every huge payday there are probably hundreds of times they dont pay out anywhere near what they should. When the mega has number drawn in 30's and 40's you see barely any 5 out of 5 payouts.  Even last nite had a lot of low numbers and how many 5 out of 5 payout were there?  When you only pay 50% out of sales you dont ever need to worry about parimutuel in the long run.

Of the big four, (California, Texas, Florida, and New York) Florida is now the only state that doesn't have a multi-state lottery game with large jackpots. I wonder when Florida will get in on the Powerball or Mega Millions bandwagon.