ialottery blog

Iowa City Ticket Wins Prize Of $25,000 A Year For Life

Someone who bought a lottery ticket in Iowa City has an extra reason to celebrate this holiday season: Their ticket won a prize of $25,000 a year for life in the Lucky for Life game!

It’s Iowa’s sixth big winner in the game since it debuted here in January 2016.

The Iowa City ticket matched the first five numbers but missed the Lucky Ball in last night’s drawing to win Lucky for Life’s second prize of $25,000 a year for life. The winning ticket was purchased at the Kum & Go at 1310 S. Gilbert St. in Iowa City.

Lucky for Life is a $2 game with drawings twice a week, at 9:38 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays. The game’s top two prize levels are described as “lasting as long as you do,” meaning that they are truly for life. The minimum guaranteed payout for those two prize levels is 20 years, and there is a lump-sum option for players who would prefer that rather than lifetime annuity payments.

The winning numbers in last night’s Lucky for Life drawing were: 1-16-27-39-45 and Lucky Ball 10. Kum & Go will receive a $500 bonus from the lottery for selling the winning ticket at one of its stores.

Players in Lucky for Life choose five numbers from a pool of 48 for the white balls and 1 out of 18 numbers for the Lucky Ball. You can win the game’s top prize of $1,000 a day for life by matching all six numbers selected in one of its drawings. The game’s second prize – for matching the first five numbers but missing the Lucky Ball – is $25,000 a year for life. Other prize levels in the game range from $4 up to $5,000.

Prizes at the top two levels in Lucky for Life need to be claimed at Iowa Lottery headquarters in Clive. If you think you’re the Iowa City winner and you have questions before coming forward to claim the prize, please give us a shout at the lottery at 515-725-7900 or email us at Wmaster@ialottery.com.

(Literally) Mapping Out Iowa’s Big Winners

It’s time for the latest map in our project this year to track the spots where the biggest lottery prizes have been won in Iowa!

Iowa Lottery players claimed 316 prizes of $600 or more in November, bringing the grand total so far to 4,034 for calendar year 2019.

As you can see from the patterns involved, something that we’ve often said about prize wins holds true: In bigger cities, more people are buying tickets and winning prizes. That’s not a matter of luck, it’s a matter of population.

Another way of putting it is that if 5 percent of lottery tickets are sold in a particular area, you'll expect to find about 5 percent of the overall winners there. Everyone has the same chance of winning, but there will be more winners in places where more tickets are sold.

Click here for a direct link to this map in an interactive format where you can see the details involved. Each dot shows the retail location where the winning ticket was purchased, the prize won, the game involved, and the date the prize was claimed.

The dots are in different colors for the four types of lottery games here in Iowa: scratch games, lotto games, InstaPlay games and pull-tab games. Scratch tickets have always been the Iowa Lottery’s leading product and they’re represented on the map by red dots, so there are a lot of them!

And as always, remember that our maps only show those big prizes that have been claimed. They don’t include those prizes that have been won but aren’t claimed yet.

Gift-Giving Reminder: Think About Age Restrictions & Content

With the arrival of the holidays, please consider this gentle reminder as you’re shopping for gifts in the days ahead.

We know that lottery tickets will be among the items that people give as presents and put in stockings this year. And at the Iowa Lottery, we’re glad that our products can be part of the fun! But remember that our tickets may not be something you want to give to those underage.

That holds true for lots of products: The content of some video games and movies may not be appropriate for all ages. Alcohol and tobacco-related products have their own age restrictions. Even toys have age-recommendation guidelines. 

In Iowa, you have to be at least 21 years old to buy lottery tickets, and we’ve always considered our products as something reserved for adults. Remember that you are gambling when you play the lottery. 

Be sure to give youngsters age-appropriate gifts in general, and when you give lottery tickets specifically, please keep the person's age in mind to minimize the risks associated with youth gambling.

We also echo the message from the Iowa Department of Public Health about the help that’s available in our state for problem gambling. If you’re concerned that someone you know is struggling with their gambling or if it is an issue for you, there are resources that can help day or night. You can call 1-800-BETSOFF (1-800-238-7633) or go to the Your Life Iowa website to reach help through secure chat or text.

Thanksgiving Thought: We’re Thankful For The Chance To Make A Difference In Iowa

During this week of Thanksgiving, we’re taking a moment to thank YOU for helping the lottery to make a difference in Iowa.

You likely already know that total lottery proceeds to state causes have topped the $2 billion mark. And during the past couple weeks, we’ve had fun celebrating that as we recognized one of today’s most important recipients of lottery proceeds: the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund.

Members of the Iowa Commission of Veterans Affairs joined the lottery in on-field presentations at the Texas-Iowa State game and the Illinois-Iowa game to highlight the nearly $30 million that the Iowa Lottery has raised for the Veterans Trust Fund since lottery proceeds were first dedicated to that cause in 2008.

The money that the lottery raises for the IVTF provides state support to Iowa veterans and their families above and beyond the federal benefits that are available to them. Not every state has something like the Veterans Trust Fund, and we’re thankful that this home-grown success story is working here in Iowa!

So, if you play the Iowa Lottery, thank you. Every time you buy one of our tickets, it makes a difference right here at home.

A quick housekeeping reminder that our offices will be closed tomorrow and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday, so we’ll see you again when business hours resume on Monday, Dec. 2!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today’s News: Happy Blasé Day (Or Can We Even Say That?)

Today, if you didn’t know, is National Blasé Day. So basically, it’s okay to be indifferent/unimpressed/bored with anything you’d like.

That’s according to the zany folks at the National Day Calendar, the website that tracks unusual and unique national days and has a day for just about everything.

The calendar points out that the word blasé comes from the French language. We, of course, have many other terms to express the same thing: Meh. Yawner. Bor-ing.

But, just throwing this out there: I’m pretty sure that winning the lottery could overcome even the most hard-core case of blasé. So my question is: What prize amount would make you feel like you’d officially won the lottery?

Some of the people we see smiling the biggest are those who have won $100 to $1,000. The folks who win millions are happy, too, but sometimes they seem pretty stunned as well.

Is there an amount that’s “just right” for you?

P.S. I wish you a very "meh" Blasé Day. :)

Police: Don’t Fall For The Call/Email/Text That You’ve Won A Lottery Jackpot

This central Iowa news coverage is such an important reminder about scams, particularly the fact that they’re on the rise this time of year. As the Nevada police officer says in this interview with WOI-TV, if something seems too good to be true, it is.

Here at the Iowa Lottery, we keep Player Security reminders -- including warnings about lottery scams -- as a permanent feature on the lottery’s website. If you ever have a question about whether something you’re contacted about is legitimate, please check out our reminders, or better yet, contact us in person. We’ll be glad to talk with you and answer any questions you may have.  

Bottom line, remember that if you win a lottery jackpot, we don’t call to let you know that. The process works the opposite way: You as the player with the winning ticket contact us at the lottery to claim the prize.

We have the records showing that a winning ticket has been sold at a particular retail location and the prize amount involved, but we don’t know who the winner is until you present the winning ticket to us at Iowa Lottery headquarters.

Player Mail: Do I Need To Keep The Tickets I Enter In The Holiday Promotion?

As the entries continue to climb in the “Ho Ho Dough” promotion, we’ve gotten the same question from numerous players: Do I need to keep the tickets after I enter them in this promotion? The short answer is no, you don’t need to keep them.

When you successfully enter an eligible ticket in the holiday promotion, the entry itself provides the information we’ll need in the Ho Ho Dough drawings. And if one of your entries is selected as a winner in a Ho Ho Dough drawing, you won’t need to present the ticket you entered in the promotion to claim your prize. The entry itself will serve as the record involved.

Years ago, people did have to keep the actual tickets they entered into our promotions, but with advances in technology, we’ve been able to update our process to make it easier.

Good luck in the promotion to everyone who has entered!

Conversation Starter: What Do Those Frequency Charts Mean?

Something we keep on our website for fun has sparked a lot of conversations over time, and while some folks swear they can use it to make predictions, it really and truly is just for fun. There’s no future-telling involved.

 

On our website, we have frequency charts that show the number of times a particular number has been selected in the drawings for our lotto games.

 

Do you like the number 8? It’s been selected 211 times as a white ball and 67 times as the Powerball since 1997. Are you partial to the number 39? It’s come up 84 times as a white ball and 11 times as the Mega Ball since 2010.

 

What’s all that indicate? Nothing, really. It’s just fun to track the drawing results. Lottery games and their drawings are based solely on random outcomes. There truly is no way to predict which numbers will be selected next in our games.

 

There’s only one “formula” that works when it comes to your chance of winning a lottery prize: You have to buy a ticket to have a chance to win!

 

So why is there such a variation in the number of times that certain numbers have been selected in lottery drawings? Part of it is just random statistics -- you really can’t predict which numbers will be drawn next. But a big part also is how long some of the numbers have been a part of the games.

 

Powerball and Mega Millions have both been redesigned several times through the years, with the numbers available to be played in them changing as the games have been updated.  Changes like that have a big impact on the number of times some numbers have been selected – or were even eligible to be selected in the drawings.

 

So, if you like the frequency charts in our lotto games, go right ahead and have fun with them. Click here for the frequency chart in Powerball, here for the chart in Mega Millions, here for the Lotto America chart, and here for the Lucky for Life chart.

 

You never know when your favorite number might move up on the list!