ialottery blog

How To Help: Find The Play ‘Em All Option

An eastern Iowa woman’s email prompted this blog entry, and I’ll do my best here to walk you through how to find the ‘Play ‘Em All’ feature on the lottery terminal in case you ever have trouble buying it.

If you’re not familiar with the Play ‘Em All option, it lets you buy plays to cover all the numbers for the Powerball, Mega Ball and Star Ball in the three different games involved. For example, if you buy the Play ‘Em All option in Powerball, you’ll get 26 plays to cover all the numbers in the Powerball pool (1-26). In Mega Millions, the Play ‘Em all option will give you 25 plays, one for each of the Mega Ball numbers; and in Lotto America, you’ll get 10 plays, one for each of the 10 Star Ball numbers.

The woman who emailed us this week said she was having trouble buying the Play ‘Em All option because employees in some of the stores in her area didn’t know about the option or how a customer could buy it. We’ve asked if she can share with us the stores involved so we can follow up with them to go over the details. But sometimes the best plan as a consumer is to have the information yourself.
 
Here in Iowa, the clerk can find the Play 'Em All feature on the lottery terminal by touching the "Special Offers" tab in the top right-hand corner of the terminal's main screen. That tab brings up the Play ‘Em All screen, and the clerk can then touch the icon for the game you want to buy.

If you’re buying a ticket at a lottery self-service kiosk here in Iowa, after you select a play option in Powerball, Mega Millions or Lotto America, in the upper right of the screen, you'll see a button that says: Play 'Em All. By touching that button, you can play that option.

I hope these “insider” tips can help you walk through the process – and make it easy!

Player Comment: I Don’t Like Seeing A $5 Prize On That Ticket

We got an email this week from a player who didn’t like the prize amounts he and his wife had uncovered while they were playing one of our scratch games. The background involved deals with the play style in our games and how to keep them different and entertaining.

The player who reached out to us said that he and his wife were playing a ticket in a $20 scratch game and uncovered four winning numbers that each had a $5 prize associated with it, so their prize total on the ticket was $20. The player said they didn’t think a prize amount of less than $20 should be on the ticket.

We agree in part with his thinking, but also disagree.

When our team thinks through the different play styles that can be involved in our scratch games, we want them to be entertaining and for there to be a lot of different ways to win a prize. In some of our games, that means you can multiple prizes on one ticket that add up to a grand total when you’re done. (That was the case with the ticket the couple was playing.) In other games, there may be just one prize amount on a ticket.

In any of our scratch games, the minimum amount you can win on a ticket is always at least the purchase price. So, for a $3 game, the minimum prize level is $3. For a $5 game, the minimum prize level is $5, and so on.

How you arrive at the prize total on your ticket varies according to the play-style options in the particular game you’re playing. So, that means if you uncover a $5 prize on a $10 or $20 ticket, keep scratching: There are more prizes to be uncovered!

Player Question: How Does A Prize Claim By A Group Actually Work?

Maybe someone’s planning ahead and looking forward to the time when we can all be out and about again! With the Powerball jackpot now up to an estimated $200 million for tomorrow night’s drawing, we got a question from a player who asked how the process actually works when a group wins a big prize.

A peek back at some very happy Cedar Rapids co-workers who claimed a $1 million lottery prize shows a lot about the process. There definitely was cheering and celebrating the day that The Dream Big Team came to the lottery!

When a group wins a lottery prize in Iowa, just one person signs the back of the ticket, but they indicate it’s on behalf of the group. You would use whatever name your group has chosen, so the details would read something like this: John Smith on behalf of The Dream Big Team.

If the prize involved is more than $600 and requires a claim form, you check the box showing that more than one person is claiming the money. Each member of the group then provides information on a Federal Form 5754 identifying themselves and listing how much of the prize they’re claiming. That’s a very important detail for tax-reporting purposes.

The lottery issues a check for the prize to the person who signed the back of the ticket. That person then can deposit or cash the check and split the winnings with the group!

We keep reminders about group lottery play as a permanent feature on our website, so feel free to check out those details as well. For example, one of the quick tips we give is for the person buying tickets on behalf of a group to keep a careful list of everyone who contributes money, how much they give and when! That can help avoid questions later about who was “in.”

A Milk Run With More: Errand Ends With $10,000 Lottery Prize

There’s something about the every-day aspect of this story, especially during these unusual times, that brings a smile. A southeast Iowa couple has taken home a $10,000 prize from a lottery scratch ticket purchased during a milk run.

Heather Love of Morning Sun claimed the prize earlier this week. She said that her husband, Nick, bought the ticket when he stopped at a local convenience store for milk on the way home from work. She said that Nick rarely buys scratch tickets but decided to get one that day in the “$100,000 Mega Crossword” game.

Heather said she was the one who scratched the ticket later that night after dinner. She thought they’d won big, but said it didn’t really start to sink in until she scanned the ticket on the lottery’s mobile app and it displayed the message: "Congratulations, you won $10,000!"

She said that she and Nick argued good-naturedly over which one of them would actually claim the prize, but agreed that they would use the winnings to buy new carpet and flooring for their home.

Heather said that winning a big prize “kind of makes your heart flutter.” She said she has often heard about people winning the lottery, but now it’s real to her.

Congratulations, Heather and Nick! Thank you for giving us a smile with your story!

Not Many Progressive Jackpots Left -- What Will Happen When They're Won?

Our blog post last month highlighting the remaining prizes list on the lottery’s website led to this blog entry today after a player question. A player named Billy reviewed the list and asked what will happen when all the progressive jackpots have been claimed in the Cherry Twist Progressive InstaPlay game.

The answer to Billy’s question highlights the unique nature of InstaPlay games, and how they combine features from both scratch and lotto games.

If you go to the remaining prizes list, you’ll see that 93 of the progressive jackpots in the game have been claimed with three still to go. But Cherry Twist Progressive won’t end when all the jackpots have been won.  

The prizes shown on the list are for the tickets released to date in Cherry Twist Progressive. Over time, as the supply of tickets in particular InstaPlay games has been purchased, the lottery has ordered more tickets. When that happens, players will notice that the available prizes increase along with the new supply of tickets. The tickets currently available in Cherry Twist Progressive are actually the third re-order in that game. We anticipate that the fourth round of tickets in the game will hit the market in the near future.

That same situation sometimes applies in scratch games. If a particular scratch game is popular, the lottery can order additional tickets to keep it available in the marketplace, knowing that customers like it.

Player Question: I Got This Ticket As A Gift And Can’t Cash It

In the past few months, we’ve gotten questions from a few folks who weren’t able to cash the lottery tickets they’d been given as gifts and I’m sharing the background involved here to try to help others avoid that situation.

The latest question came from a woman who emailed us about some scratch tickets she’d gotten as a present. She played the tickets and saw that one of them indicated she’d won a prize. She took the ticket to a local store to cash it and the clerks there told her the lottery terminal couldn’t read the ticket’s results. She emailed us to ask what was going on.

We looked up the details about the game involved and it turns out the tickets she’d received were several years old. The claim period for prizes in the game had expired nearly seven years ago.

She was a good sport about it all and thanked us for our help, saying it would be just her luck to win a prize in such an old game. But we were disappointed for her, and know she was disappointed, too.

Last month, I blogged about a couple items on the Iowa Lottery website that are important when it comes to the prizes in Iowa Lottery games and the timeframes people have to claim them. I’ll highlight the lists again now because they’re important.

First up is the Unclaimed Prizes list where you can see all the prizes of more than $600 in Iowa that are still unclaimed in lotto and InstaPlay games. You can search the list in several different ways – by game, place of purchase, prize amount, date of win, and date of expiration – whichever is most important to you.

Next is the Remaining Prizes list. On that page, you can see the number of larger prizes in our scratch, pull-tab and InstaPlay games, how many of those prizes have been claimed, and the number that remain unclaimed. It’s another important reference item designed to give players insight into the games we have on the market.

For our scratch games and pull-tab games, we also have lists on our website that highlight the current games that are ending and the final date players have to claim prizes in them. There also are lists of the games that have already ended – meaning their prize-claim periods have expired – in the past three years. Click here and here to access those lists.

And if you’re giving lottery tickets to someone as a gift, please be sure they’re from current games.

Silly & Fun: ‘Dad Jokes’ Scratch Game Hits Stores This Week

A new game hitting the market this week here in Iowa has had us at the lottery laughing the entire time we were working on it. It’s just so silly and fun. We hope it makes you smile, too.

The new $1 scratch game is called “Dad Jokes.” To help build suspense, the first part of the joke is printed on the front of the ticket, but the answer is hidden under a box you’ll need to scratch off. (The answer isn’t part of the play area on the ticket where you try to win a prize by revealing three like amounts.)

The game offers prizes of up to $1,000, but we think part of the motivation to buy a ticket may be to find out the rest of the joke! There are lots of different jokes on the tickets themselves, so have fun learning them all.

Distribution of the Dad Jokes game has started today and tickets in it will be available at lottery retail locations statewide by Friday.

And yes, some of the jokes are so bad, they may make you groan. That’s by design. They are dad jokes, after all!