ialottery blog

$1 Million For Iowa Veterans So Far

I am so proud to tell you that today, the Iowa Lottery is sending nearly $1 million to the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund. It’s the lottery’s first transfer of proceeds to the fund, which directly benefits our state’s veterans and their families.

Last month, I blogged about the lottery’s new initiative to support veterans. The proceeds from an instant-scratch game (Stars & Stripes) and a pull-tab game (All American) already are dedicated to the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund, and we’ll come out with another set of games dedicated to veterans’ causes in January. And in each fiscal year going forward, we’ll have another four games to benefit veterans.

Today, the lottery will transfer $992,772.81 to the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund. That’s the proceeds total from the sale of veterans-benefit lottery tickets during the first quarter of FY 2009. We anticipate we’ll raise between $2 million and $3 million for veterans this year.

Thank you for all you have done to help us ensure a stable, ongoing source of revenue to help our veterans!

The Iowa Veterans Trust Fund was created to assist qualified veterans in paying for expenses such as:

• Travel expenses for wounded veterans directly related to follow-up medical care;
• Job training or college tuition assistance;
• Unemployment assistance during a period of unemployment due to prolonged physical or mental illness or disability resulting from military service;
• Benefits for a child or children of a disabled or deceased veteran following September 11, 2001;
• Individual or family counseling programs;
• And family and children support groups and honor guard reimbursement.

To learn more about the Veterans Trust Fund, visit www.iowava.org.

Do Easy Picks Have A Better Chance?

One of the questions that often comes our way focuses on the issue of easy picks (also called computer picks) vs. numbers you choose yourself in our lotto games. Specifically, which has a better chance of winning?

The short answer is that neither does, but some additional background will help spell it out.

You’re probably already familiar with this, but if not: In lotto games like Powerball and Hot Lotto, you have the option of choosing your own numbers or letting the computer generate numbers for you.

You can choose your own numbers by marking them on a play slip or asking the clerk to enter the numbers you want. Or, you can let the computer generate numbers for you in an easy pick play, either by asking the clerk for it or marking “easy pick” on a play slip.

Either way, the set of numbers you end up with has the same chance of winning as any other play in the game. Look at the odds in Hot Lotto. You only saw one set of odds there, right? There’s not one set of odds for easy picks and another set for the numbers you choose. That’s because the odds of winning are exactly the same for each ticket sold in the game.

There is a difference, however, in the percentage of the types of plays being made. Somewhere between 70 percent and 80 percent of tickets purchased are easy picks. It stands to reason then that about 70 percent to 80 percent of winners would be easy-pick plays, and that is the case.

It doesn’t mean that easy-pick plays have better odds of winning, it simply means that people are making more of them.

Jackpot: Cash vs. Annuity

We get a lot of questions about the cash vs. annuity options for the jackpots in Powerball and Hot Lotto. People say they don’t understand why the lump-sum amount is less than the annuity option. And they want to know what happens to “the rest” of the money when they choose the cash option. They seem to think that someone, likely the government, ends up with the money they should have had.

But in fact, if you choose the cash option, “the rest” of the money doesn’t exist. I’ll explain.

When a player wins the jackpot in a game like Powerball or Hot Lotto, they have the option of choosing to receive their winnings in one lump-sum payment (also called the cash option) or in annuitized payments over time.

When you choose the annuity option, the lottery invests the money from the sale of tickets for the jackpot drawing and then makes payments to the player over time. In Powerball, you’ll receive 30 payments over 29 years. In Hot Lotto, it’s 25 payments over 24 years.

Holiday Kickoff

In my personal life, I’m a purist who takes the holidays one at a time to savor each before moving on to the next. First comes Halloween, then comes Thanksgiving and then and only then is it time to get out the Christmas decorations.

But not everyone share that view, and that’s OK! Some folks want to get started early on their winter holiday celebrations, and our holiday games are part of that annual tradition. So, the roll-out of our games is officially starting today.

This week, the lottery’s district sales representatives will be delivering three holiday-themed games to our retail locations. Three more will follow by mid-November. This week’s offerings include:

• Winner Wonderland, a $1 game. Its tickets feature the scene of a town nestled in the winter snow. The scene spans four separate tickets in the game. 
• Bah Humbucks, a $5 game featuring Mr. Scrooge.
• and Holiday Riches, a $10 game offering instant prizes of up to $50,000 and a second-chance drawing with a top prize of $100,000 and 20 prizes of $1,000. It’s the first time we’ve offered a second-chance promotion during the holiday season, but our players have been requesting it, so we hope you enjoy it!

We’ll also have gift envelopes at our retail locations so you can buy lottery tickets, put them in a gift envelope, and viola! You’ll have a present ready to go. And don’t forget yourself this holiday season. Sometimes the person who most deserves a present of lottery tickets is … you!

Bought Five Tickets, But Didn’t Win

We get a lot of questions about the issue of the overall odds in our games. The question generally comes in this form: Your instant-scratch game says it has overall odds of winning of 1 in 4.59. I bought five tickets, why didn’t I win?

The Iowa Lottery provides both the overall odds of winning in its games along with the odds of winning individual prize levels to try to provide the fullest amount of information possible about our games. But the issue of odds can be confusing, so I’ll try to explain it in a little more detail.

Let’s take the example I gave above: Our current “A Day At The Fair” scratch game has

The back of "A Day At the Fair" lottery ticket showing the game’s overall odds.

  overall odds of winning of 1 in 4.59. That does not mean that if you buy five tickets in the game, one of those tickets will be a guaranteed winner. It means that if you bought all of the tickets available in the game, about 1 in 5 will win a prize.

Each of our games often involve millions of tickets and for security reasons, winning tickets are randomly distributed throughout each game to ensure that no one, not even lottery employees, knows exactly which tickets are winners. That also means that winning tickets in our games are in no particular order.

We’ll continue to provide detailed information about the odds in our games so our players have as thorough an understanding as possible about the issue. We consider sharing those details to be part of our mission to provide fun and entertainment while raising as much money as we can as responsibly as we can.

No One From Here Ever Wins…

I recently had a conversation with a lottery colleague from Washington, D.C., that had us both laughing when we realized that we both hear the same urban myth, it's just regionalized to fit our particular areas of the country. I'm guessing that the same conversation takes place around the world and it's just localized so that you can insert your state or country's name to suit your purpose.

I was on the telephone with someone at the D.C. Lottery when we began talking about recent Powerball and Hot Lotto winners. I told her that at the Iowa Lottery, we repeatedly hear that no one from Iowa ever wins the jackpot. (It's not true, but that doesn't stop the stories.) She immediately started to laugh.

She said the the word in her area is that no one from Washington, D.C., ever wins, it's always "those players from Iowa." Then I started to laugh.

In reality, there have been multiple jackpot winners from both places. People just seem to believe the opposite, and the story appears to be localized from area to area.

Is That Receipt For My Ticket?

We just got a great question from a lottery player and I want to answer it here on the blog because it covers an important issue about the receipts available in Iowa for lottery tickets. We’ve also posted a video about this question on our Web site and YouTube if you want to have a look.

A Des Moines man e-mailed us to ask, “How can I be sure the receipt I’m given is really for my lottery ticket?”

You’ll likely remember that last spring, the Iowa Lottery put in place some enhanced security procedures for its tickets. Click here and here to read a couple articles from that time about the new procedures. In March, the lottery began to require that all tickets in Iowa have to be signed before they can be validated. And in May, lottery terminals in Iowa began printing two receipts for every ticket that is checked or cashed. One receipt is for the player and one is for the retailer. Both show the results of the ticket involved.

I’ll take a second to give the reminder that you should first protect yourself by determining on your own whether your ticket has won a prize before you present it to be checked or cashed. But when your ticket is validated, the same serial number is printed on both the receipt and the ticket, so you can ensure they match.

If the receipt is for a scratch ticket, information at the bottom of the receipt shows the game, pack and ticket number for the ticket involved. Those same numbers are just above the barcode on the back of each scratch ticket, so you can check the receipt against the ticket to be sure they match. (Check out the pics with this blog entry to see what the serial numbers look like.)

If the receipt is for a lotto ticket in a game like Powerball or Hot Lotto, in the upper left-hand corner of the receipt is the word “Term,” which relates to the terminal being used to check the ticket. Underneath that is the 14-digit serial number for your ticket. The serial number is the string of numbers in front of the dash. That same serial number also is in the upper left-hand corner of the ticket itself. So again, you can check the receipt against the ticket to ensure they match.

Receipts are not involved for the Iowa Lottery’s pull-tab tickets because they already include “built-in receipts.” Any prize amount won on a pull-tab is already printed underneath the tabs on the ticket so the prize involved is very clear.

A lot of retail locations automatically offer nonwinning tickets back to their customers, but if that doesn’t happen, feel free to ask for your ticket back if you have any concerns. Winning tickets are kept by the lottery and its retailers for record-keeping and security purposes, but nonwinning tickets can be returned to the customer. 

Iowa’s Winningest Names

Maybe we got a little silly when we were overcome by the heat. Maybe we were just looking for a project to fill out a long summer day. Really, we just thought it would be something fun to do.

So this summer, we ran an analysis of our lottery winners’ names just to put together a list of Iowa’s winningest names when it comes to lottery prizes. A few names immediately rose to the top: Tim and Robert, Kellie and Patty.

I’ll immediately emphasize that people with those names aren’t really any luckier than anyone else in our state. As I’ve said in this blog before, lottery games and their drawings are based upon random statistics. We conducted our analysis just for fun, so you don’t have to change your name to win. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has the same chance of winning!

In our project, we compiled the first names of those who have claimed lottery prizes of $100,000 or more since the lottery’s start in 1985. Then we analyzed the database in two different ways: We looked to see which names had won the most money in terms of lottery prizes of $100,000 or more. Then we looked at which names had won the most prizes in terms of sheer numbers at that same level.

Iowa’s Powerball Billboard Crews

We just posted a really fun video on our Web site and YouTube about the folks who climb into the air to change the jackpot numbers you see on Powerball billboards around our state. 

We met a ClearChannel Outdoor billboard crew on a bright, sunny morning in Des Moines and watched as Bryan Byre of Pleasant Hill got out a couple ladders, put on a safety harness and started climbing up to get to work. We expected it to be a complicated process, but Brian made it look easy. In fact, he was done in just a few minutes. So that left us time to pick his brain about his unusual job.

Brian says he’s been climbing on billboards for years. There’s a training process where newbies start out working on lower signs and then gradually work their way up to the highest billboards in Iowa, which are about 100 feet up there. Brian says he doesn’t have (much of) a fear of heights, which has got to be a plus for his job!

Brian says people driving by often stop to watch what he’s doing and drivers honk at him all the time. When he was new on the job, he waved back a lot, but he’s so used to it now, the horns often just blend into the background.

So, what’s worse for a billboard worker: snow, rain, cold or wind? Brian says it’s wind, definitely wind. You’re on a billboard ledge dozens of feet in the air trying to paste a large sheet of artwork onto the surface in front of you and the wind whips everything around, sending glue into your face and hair. I’m sure Brian has a renewed appreciation for his safety equipment on days like that!

The crews change out the numbers on Iowa’s Powerball billboards twice a week after each drawing. Their goal is to have that work done by 11 a.m. so people can see the new jackpot amount as soon as possible.

Here’s another unusual billboard fact for you: The paste that’s used to put up the signs is a natural product made from potatoes! The starch in potatoes makes for an extremely sticky solution. It doesn’t look too appetizing though – it’s thick, lumpy, green stuff!   

Got Any Game Ideas?

There’s a new video on our Web site and YouTube with folks giving their ideas for what would make a good lottery game. We’re always interested in your perspective on that matter to see how your ideas mesh with the games we already have on sale or those we have on the way.

The folks in the video have some really insightful, relevant ideas. We may just have to use some of those!

The lottery develops game ideas from a variety of sources. Some we come up with on our own based upon the things in our everyday lives. Other ideas come from the companies with which we do business  -- some of them have licensed popular themes, such as television shows, movies and their popular stars. Other game ideas are suggested by Iowans. Every few years, we hold a “Design A Game” contest that lottery players can enter to win cash prizes. Iowans have come up with some really strong-selling games through the years.

Alice Hayes with her
$12,000-winning ticket
in 2006.

One of the best stories from our contests is that of a Webster City woman who won the top prize of $3,000 in our 2005 design-a-game contest with her idea for a scratch game called “Dream’n of Dollars.” Alice Hayes’ design was chosen as tops by the judges from amongst more than 1,900 entries in our contest. But the good news for Alice didn’t end there!

When our Dream’n of Dollars game went on sale in February 2006, Alice bought some tickets in it. She was perfectly within her rights to do so – although she designed the artwork for the tickets, she had nothing to do with the lottery’s development of the prize structure in the game and had no control over the prizes offered in it. One of the tickets Alice purchased ended up winning the game’s top prize of $12,000! Check out part of the coverage of her good luck here! I guess some people just can’t help it – they have the golden touch!   

We’ll hold more design-a-game contests in the years to come, so be sure to be on the look-out for them. Your game idea could come out on top!