Every year I used to link to a good service for El Gordo tickets. Unfortunately that service stopped doing business years ago.
I am happy to report that I am now able to again link to an excellent source for El Gordo tickets.
Here it is
This company has one of the best systems for buying El Gordo that I have seen or used. You get to choose your ticket numbers right up front, and you actually see the scanned image of the real ticket that you're buying, before you make the purchase. It's really fantastic.
For those who don't know how El Gordo works, here's a primer:
- El Gordo is basically a huge raffle. However, unlike typical US raffles in which there is only one of each number available, El Gordo publishes "series" of raffle numbers. So if you have the number 123456, there are probably a dozen (or more) other people who have that same number.
- But that's OK (to have the same number as other people), because the prize pool is so huge that you'll still be pretty rich if you win.
- The prize pool this year is €2,520,000,000. That's right, $2.5 billion Euros. Or, in US Dollars, that's $3.3 billion.
- El Gordo tickets are pretty expensive. So they divide tickets into 10 sections called "decimas", and each one is only one-tenth the cost of a full ticket. Each decima has the same ticket number. So if you buy one decima (one-tenth of the ticket) and your ticket wins $1 million, then your decima wins $100,000 -- one-tenth of the ticket's prize value. (On the ticket service site the call the decimas "shares".)
- Of course, you can buy an entire ticket if you like (all 10 decimas/shares), but most people like to buy decimas from different ticket numbers, so they have more chances to win.
- In addition to the main jackpot prize, there are numerous other ways to win a lower-tier prize. For example, matching the last digit on your ticket to the last digit of the winning number. I can't remember all the different ways to win, but luckily if you use the lottery service, they will figure out for you if you won or not. (Of course you can double-check them, but they're very good at what they do.)
- The drawing is on December 22.
Just for the record, I am not related in any way to the service I've linked to above. I am not an owner, investor, employee, etc. What you choose to do is your business. But the company has come a long way, and I am very impressed with them. In fact, I played Powerball a couple times with them in the record draw last week, just to see how they would do in a massive crunch time like that, and it was a very good experience. I believe I'll be doing some El Gordo business with them too!
Here's the link again: Play El Gordo online in the Dec. 22 drawing