Missouri Lottery changing games Monday
Posted: 9/6/2008 2:54:02 PM
Missouri Lottery players will get a new numbers game Monday, but also lose one.
"Show Me Cash," a daily on-line drawing, is set to begin Monday when the twice-daily and struggling "Show Me 5 Paydown" game goes out of business.
Lottery spokesman Gary Gonder said the new Pick 5-style game would offer players bigger jackpots and better odds of winning.
The top prize in every Paydown drawing was a tax-free, lump sum $50,000. But if no player won that prize, cash trickled down to increase the amounts of lesser prizes awarded in the same drawing.
If no one wins the daily Show Me drawing the top jackpot will be increased by $5,000 and roll over to the next day's drawing, much like the twice-weekly multi-state Powerball game. Each new Show Me jackpot will start at $50,000.
Gonder said about a dozen people annually won the top Paydown prize by correctly picking five of five numbers drawn. The Show Me game is mathematically designed to create around 33 winners a year, with awarded top prizes expected to average $150,000 (minus taxes of course).
The chances of winning in the new game improve because its pool of numbers is reduced to 39 from 44 used in Paydown.
Gonder said the overall odds of picking any winner — or letting a computer pick them for you — would go from 1 in 11 to 1 in 8.77.
"The Paydown game was not performing," said Gonder. In recent years he said the average number of players in the 14 weekly drawings had slipped from 480,000 to around 340,000 while annual sales fell from $25 million to around $18 million.
"We thought we could arrest this decline and change the game," he said.
One thing that won't change is the price of the game: $1 per play.
The winning numbers for the new game will be presented on the Missouri Lottery Results page at Lottery Post (www.lotterypost.com/results/mo) following each 6:45 pm drawing.
More details are available, including a prize and odds chart, on the Lottery Post Event Calendar.
A sample play slip for the new Show Me Cash game from the Missouri Lottery.
Source: Lottery Post Staff
