TLC's "Lottery Changed My Life" Needs New Episodes

TLC (The Learning Channel) is airing reruns of the show "Lottery Changed My Life" on Saturday 02/15/2014 and on Monday 02/17/2014. This show chronicles the unique experiences of individuals who won big and struck it rich by playing the lottery. The episodes are kind of old so I'm sure most lottery enthusiast have seen them before, if you have not seen them check them out, they are pretty interesting. However, TLC is long overdue for some new episodes of this show.

Mega Millions Jackpot is Over Half a Billion Dollars at $550 MILLION

It's no surprise that the Mega Millions jackpot has reached over half a billion dollars at its current $550 MILLION jackpot for 12/17/2013. With the super astronomical odds to win the jackpot at 1 in 258,890,850 who knows how large the jackpot could grow? Will we see a billion dollar jackpot one day? Only time will tell. The downside of the new Mega Millions odds is that there will be less jackpot winners but bigger jackpot amounts. I'd rather have more jackpot winners with lesser jackpot amounts, so I like the old odds of 1 in 175,711,536 to win the jackpot. Besides, who really needs $550 MILLION? I'm sure most people would be happy just to win the Mega Millions jackpot starting amount of $15 million.

Power Play variable multiplier returning to Powerball on Jan-22-2014

Beginning on Jan-22-2014, the current fixed Power Play prizes will be replaced by prizes that depend upon a randomly drawn Power Play multiplier number of 2, 3, 4 or 5, to determine Power Play prizes for the bottom seven Powerball prize tiers. The multiplier will not apply to the Match 5+0 prize, which will remain at its current $2 million if the Power Play option is purchased.

It's about time that Powerball brought back the Power Play variable prize multiplier. Multiplying the prizes by 3, 4, or 5 should increase the prize amounts from the current Power Play fixed prize amounts. This is also a good change because the current fixed Power Play prize amounts with no multiplier number drawing is kind of boring anyways.

A Big Thumbs Down for the new Mega Millions matrix

The new Mega Millions matrix, match 5/75 + 1/15 started on 10/22/2013. The previous matrix was match 5/56 + 1/46. Hey thanks Mega Millions, for making the Jackpot and 2nd-Tier prize way harder to win. I don't care that the overall odds to win any prize have improved to 1 in 15.

The previous odds to win the 2nd-Tier Prize were 1 in 3,904,701. The new odds to win the 2nd-Tier Prize are 1 in 18,492,204. These new odds are much worse than the odds to win the jackpot for a standard 6/49 lotto game, which are 1 in 13,983,816.

The previous Mega Millions odds to win the jackpot were 1 in 175,711,536. The new odds to win the jackpot are 1 in 258,890,850. Are you kidding me? The old odds were already astronomical and the new odds are super astronomical.

LOTTOSOUP

In addition to scratch-offs, I also play lotto games. I just want to give a shout-out to lottosoup.com, this is a great website for serious lotto players who want comprehensive lotto statistics about past winning numbers. They cover all sorts of stats on all major North American and UK lotto games.

Prize Tiers

Here's an example of prize tiers from a Texas Lottery scratch-off game.
Game Name: Texas Lottery Black-Series IV-Limited Edition
The overall odds of winning any prize from this game are 1 in 3.29

It's a $10 game with 10 prize tiers:

Prize Amount    Tier
$1 MILLION           1
$10,000                2
$5,000                  3
$1,000                  4
$500                     5
$200                     6
$100                     7
 $50                      8
 $20                      9
 $10                    10

If you split these prize tiers in half the top half would be $1 MILLION down to $500 (prize tiers 1 to 5) and the bottom half would be $200 down to $10 (prize tiers 6 to 10). When playing scratch-off games you can expect that most of your prize wins will come from the bottom half of prize tiers because the odds of winning prizes from the top half of prize tiers are much worse than the bottom half. Don't be discouraged by this because this is the norm, however, if you have never won a prize from the top half of prize tiers the strategies outlined in WINNING SCRATCH-OFF STRATEGIES can help you find those prizes.

New Feature for Prizes Claimed on Texas Lottery Website

The Texas Lottery website (txlottery.org) has a cool new feature for scratch-off games. If you click on a scratch-off game you will see under No. Prizes Claimed there is a blue underlined number that is a link to another page. Click on the number and the new page will display Date Claimed, Selling Retailer, Selling Retailer Address, Selling Retailer City, Selling Retailer Zip Code, Pack Number, and Ticket Number. This feature is nice to have because it’s nice to know when and where the top prizes were sold. I hope other states follow suit.