Lucky lottery player is seeing double after both tickets hit with Megaplier
By Kate Northrop
BOCA RATON, Fla. — There's one lucky woman in Florida whose bet is paying off two times over — technically four times — when she bought two matching Mega Millions tickets, both with the Megaplier option.
Susan Fitton, 64, of Boca Raton, was elated after her bet paid off handsomely, instantly turning her into a multi-millionaire. Following the Mega Millions drawing on Tues., Sept. 14, 2021, she became $4 million richer after winning $2 million on two matching tickets with the multiplier add-on.
Not only that, but she paid less than $20 for those tickets. Both of her two tickets contained three plays each, with the Megaplier add-on bumping up the cost of one play to $3. In total, she spent $18.
The winner beat the 1 in 12,607,306 odds of matching all five white balls but missing the Mega Ball. The winning numbers on Sept. 14 were 4, 13, 19, 63, and 64 with Mega Ball 16. The Megaplier was 2.
Fitton bought her winning tickets at Prip Mart on West Camino Real in Boca Raton. For selling the two tickets worth $2 million each, the retailer will receive a $10,000 bonus commission.
The next Mega Millions drawing takes place on Tues., Oct. 5 at 11:00 pm EST. The jackpot is currently set at $45 million. Each play costs $2.
The Powerball jackpot is currently at an estimated $635 million after a $15 million increase from $620 million as a result of high ticket sales. The drawing for the 10th-largest jackpot in the United States is scheduled for tonight, Oct. 2. Tickets cost $2 each. The winning numbers will be published at USA Mega just after 11:00 pm Eastern Time (8:00 pm Pacific).
I always buy the Megaplier or Powerplay options for their respective lotteries.
KLC had a promotion in which you get a free PB ticket without Powerplay...but folks have won on free tickets before...just saying! (Drawing tonight.)
Not unheard of. I remember back in the day someone in Michigan buying 5 MM tix and getting 5* $250,000 second prizes.
Way to Go!! God was on your side!!!
I don't see why anyone hasn't bought 100,000 identical tickets to get 100,000 5+0 hitters. You'd end up winning $100 billion dollars before taxes. It would be way too easy for someone to do this.
Then You Do IT And show us how IT'S DONE!!! ;-))
64 years old, she's still young enough to travel and enjoy her wealth. While setting some aside for family members if needed. Congratulations to her. She thought ahead, and ended up doubling her money. Smart move.
Very strange fact: There has been over 55 Powerball drawings since April 10th. The PowerPlay number in all of those drawings has been either (2) or (3), except for 2 dates.....June 30th and Sept 4th....every other drawing including this Saturday night's has been 2 or 3. Amazingly we have had a 10 only once in 2021, that was back in February.
Oh that's a sure bet right there. 100K trash can liners.
That is very strange. I am going to check the date the powerplay was 10.
That date was February 20, 2021 and the winning numbers were 4-8-22-32-58 with powerball 4. I wonder who were the winners for that drawing. Congrats to the winners as always.
There aren't enough states to do that. IIRC, each state has a cap on how much they pay out per draw. Once the number of winning tickets hits the cap, the prize becomes parimutuel and all tickets share the pot.
So even if someone travelled the US and bought the maximum tickets in each state that the particular lottery is in, it wouldn't even be close to a single billion. Don't get me wrong, it would be well worth paying for plane tickets to go get tickets in every state to buy tickets, then back to each state to cash them, if there was some weird quirk or rule that you couldn't just play the numbers you knew were going to win, and get separate lines for each of the "plus" numbers and win the jackpot.
Good for her, congrats to the lucky lady, enjoy.
This might help to explain. Odds for powerplay...
x2 = 1 in 1.79
x3 = 1 in 3.31
x4 = 1 in 14.33
x5 = 1 in 21.5
x10 = 1 in 43 (only when the annuity grand prize is $150 million or less.
Can someone extrapolate the number of chances there are in the PowerPlay pool by the numbers shown in rcbbuckeye's post?
I want to use that formula for another game offering similar prize bonuses.
Maybe someone did, but their numbers didn't hit so it didnt make the news.
This is one of the "In Theory, this is good, but the Execution would be pretty stupid," type of posts. Spending $300,000 on Lottery tickets would be REALLY stupid although the payout would be beyond phenomenal. Let's say a Lottery Winner does buy $300,000 on say 100,000 2,4,30,32,35 with Multiplier and Megaball 2. 2,4,30,32,35 and Megaball 10 shows up and he wins 100 Billion before taxes and fees. Although he got 100 billion before taxes and fees, he'd get dragged and ragged so hard by so many People for spending $300,000 on Lottery tickets. $300,000 is a HOUSE. People would be criticising him for putting what could have been a house into LOTTERY tickets. He'd get Congratulations for the huge payoff, but so much criticism for spending $300,000 on Lottery tickets. He'd be getting lots of criticism for not using ANY of the $300,000 for Charity or to feed hungry people. He'd get criticism for stuff like ,"This guy is now richer than Mark Zuckerberg before taxes and fees who worked <snip> hard for his 97 billion and all this guy did was put $300,000 in the Lottery! He'd be set for Multiple lifetimes, but the criticism would be outstanding....
The payout wouldn't be $100 billion - not even one billion - the lotteries have rules covering cases where if there's so many tickets purchased on a winning combo paying out the full amount would result in a loss (e.g. the 5 main balls came out 1-2-3-4-5 - one of if not the most popular combos).
As an example, in Massachusetts:
"In some cases, prizes may be paid on a pari-mutuel basis and will be lower than published prize levels. Refer to the official game rules for a detailed explanation of the optional pari-mutuel prize payment."
To paraphrase a line in "Casino", the lotteries are in this to make money, not to lose money.
Good for you Suzy !!!
.....Should be enough to keep you in cat food
Or you could tape them together and put on a cardboard roll
"Can someone extrapolate the number of chances there are in the PowerPlay pool by the numbers shown in rcbbuckeye's post?"
What exactly do you want extrapolated? If the chance of 10x is 1 in 43 we might expect t to happen once every 43 times as along term average. To not happen at all in 55 drawings is way short of being wildly unlikely, but there haven't been 55 drawings in which 10x was a possibility. Because 10x isn't one of the possible results when the jackpot is more than $150 million there have only been 20 chances since 4/10. There have been 36 chances since the beginning of the year, so the single occurrence in February is pretty close to the long term average we might expect.
At 1 in 21.5 the chances of seeing 5x at least once in 55 drawings is higher, but its chance of not turning up at all is a bit over 1 in 15.
"I don't see why anyone hasn't bought 100,000 identical tickets to get 100,000 5+0 hitters."
The stupidest part of that thoroughly stupid idea might be playing identical tickets. With 26 possibilities for the power ball 100,000 you could guarantee getting the right powerball on 3846 tickets. I said "might" because anyone who's not wildly stupid (or off their meds) would know that the chances of having the 5 regular numbers is low even if they were different on each of the 100,000 tickets. If you could manage to get them right, though, playing each of the 26 power balls would mean that 1 of every 26 tickets was a jackpot winner.
Of course the jackpot is always parimutuel, so it would take almost 25 years to win the 3,846 jackpots without "sharing" them with yourself.