ialottery blog

Player Mail: Why Do Only Rural/Urban/Young/Old People Win?

One of the topics that comes our way the most seems to focus on the belief that only certain kinds of people win – rural, urban, young, old, tall, short, etc., etc. But interestingly, there’s no button on a lottery machine that says only “those people” can win.

If you look at any group of players – those in a particular state, those with a certain hair color, those who wear certain clothes – that group will win in proportion to the percentage that they play. Another way of putting that is that if a defined group buys 10 percent of the tickets, they’ll win 10 percent of the prizes on average and over a reasonable period of time.

The same holds true for folks in different states. If 5 percent of lottery tickets are purchased in a particular area, you’ll expect to find that about 5 percent of the overall winners are from there as well. And that's been the case with the Iowa Lottery.  

Now, it is true that with more people living in bigger cities, more people are buying lottery tickets there and winning prizes. It doesn’t mean that they’re luckier – everyone has the same chance of winning – but there will be more winners in the places where more tickets are being sold.

Bottomline, it really doesn’t make any difference where you buy your tickets or what kind of person you are – lottery winners are determined by nothing more than pure, random chance. Everyone has the same shot at winning, and it’s our job to ensure that’s the case. 

Which Is Better: Easy Pick or Play Slip?

A woman on Facebook just raised a question we hear a lot: What's the best option when it comes to playing lotto games like Powerball® and Mega Millions® - easy pick or play slip? I think the bottom-line thing people want to know is whether one of the options will give them a better chance of winning.

The short answer is that it doesn't matter - every play in our games has the same fair shot at a prize, but some additional background will help spell it out.

In our lotto games, you have the option of choosing your own numbers or letting the computer generate plays for you. To choose your own numbers, you can mark them on a play slip or ask the clerk to key in the numbers you want. To let the computer generate numbers for you in an easy pick play, just tell the clerk you want an easy pick or mark "easy pick" on a play slip.

Either way, the set of numbers you end up with will have the same chance of winning as any other play in the game. There isn't one set of odds for easy picks and another set for the numbers you choose yourself. The odds of winning are exactly the same for each ticket sold in the game.

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

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

More Player Mail, This Time About All or Nothing…

I think this week’s warmer weather has us all poking our heads up above ground again because we’re getting player mail about all sorts of topics! Several of the questions have been about our new All or Nothing™ lotto game as folks continue to learn about it.

A few people who contacted us said they thought there were only two ways to win in the game – by matching all of the numbers in one of its drawings or none of them. Well, that IS the name of the game and it does signify that you can win its top prize by matching all or nothing. But there are eight other ways to win in it, too, so be sure to check your ticket for those prizes as well!

One woman who reached out to us was afraid she’d thrown away a $20 winning ticket because she didn’t realize that was one of the game’s prize levels. Be sure to check your tickets for any prize you may have won, not just the top prize!

We’ve described the prize structure in All or Nothing as looking like an hourglass with all the different ways you can win, so I’ve included that graphic here. I think it’s a good illustration!

And get this: Since All or Nothing started in late January, Iowa Lottery players have won nearly 203,000 prizes in the game, including 48 prizes of $1,000 for matching 11 numbers and 52 prizes of $1,000 for matching just one number. Kinda cool that it’s so evenly split.

Mega Millions Update Coming Next Month

Here’s a head’s up that changes are coming in the Mega Millions® game next month. And like the updates that were made in Powerball® last year, they’ll mean a higher starting jackpot, faster growing jackpots and a $1 million second prize. But the price of a Mega Millions ticket will remain unchanged at $1, and while there will be better overall odds of winning any prize, the odds in all nine of the game’s prize levels will change, with some growing longer and others decreasing.

We think the changes will turn up the excitement level while continuing to differentiate Powerball and Mega Millions as separate premier big-jackpot games, each with its own features.

Starting with the Mega Millions drawing on Oct. 22, the game’s minimum starting jackpot will increase from $12 million to $15 million, and the jackpot will grow by at least $5 million between drawings when no one wins the big prize.

The numbers available to play in Mega Millions will change with the new version of the game. Players will choose five balls from a pool of 75 (currently 56) and another number, called the Mega Ball®, from a separate pool of 15 (currently 46). The result will be overall odds of about 1 in 15 to win any prize (currently about 1:40). 

Under the new matrix, the odds of winning the jackpot move to 1 in 258.9 million (currently 1:175.7 million).

Here are some of the other enhancements that players will see:
•    The Megaplier, a multiplier option that players can purchase for an additional $1 per play to increase their non-jackpot prizes, will be expanded to include a factor of five (currently four). That means a Mega Millions ticket will be able to win up to $5 million even without matching all six numbers.
•    The Mega Millions prize structure also will change. For example, the game’s second prize will increase from $250,000 to $1 million for matching the first five numbers.

Here is what the Mega Millions prize structure will look like effective next month:

Mega Millions Prize Structure effective October 2013
Match	Base Prize	Odds: 1 in
5 + Mega Ball	JACKPOT	258,890,850
5 (no Mega Ball)	$1 million	18,492,204
4 + Mega Ball	$5,000	738,688
4 (no Mega Ball)	$500	52,835
3 + Mega Ball	$50	10,720
3 (no Mega Ball)	$5	766
2 + Mega Ball	$5	473
1 + Mega Ball	$2	56
0 + Mega Ball	$1	21
overall odds of winning a prize: 1 in 14.7

Beginning tomorrow, the number of Mega Millions drawings for which you can purchase plays in advance will gradually decrease until the start of the revamped game. Then they’ll go back to the usual 10 drawings in advance once the redesign takes effect. 

Mega Millions tickets have been sold in Iowa since 2010; Powerball since 1992. The last time the Mega Millions matrix changed was in June 2005.

In addition to Mega Millions and Powerball, the Iowa Lottery sells four other numbers games: Hot Lotto®, Pick 3, Pick 4 and Iowa’s $100,000 Cash Game.

How Do Those Lottery Odds Work?

We've blogged about this issue before, but it is still one of the topics we receive ongoing questions about, so I'll cover it again here. Nothing like an oldie but a goodie!

Players are always asking us about the odds in our lottery games, particularly instant-scratch games. And we understand -- the laws of random statistics can be a difficult concept to absorb, even for those of us who work here.

Lottery players across Iowa win prizes each day, but the thing to remember is that each play is based solely on random chance. There are many winning tickets, but your purchase does not guarantee a winner.

Let’s take the scratch game “Super Crossword” as an example. The overall odds of winning a prize in that $5 game are about 1 in 3.69. So, the question we often get goes something like this: “The overall odds said 1:3.69, but I bought 4 tickets and I didn’t win, so your odds must be wrong.” But in fact, they’re not.

The overall odds of winning on a scratch ticket apply to each ticket purchased in a game, not a series of tickets. So, if a scratch game has overall odds of winning of about 1:4, that doesn't mean that if you buy four tickets that one will automatically be a winner. It means that if you were to buy all of the tickets available in that game, approximately 1 in 4 of them would win a prize.
 
It’s also important to know that the distribution of tickets within our games is completely random. That’s part of the security process involved in running a lottery; not even our sales representatives who deliver our tickets to stores know where the winning tickets are or which stores will receive them. So, there could be three winning tickets in a row in one of our games, and then several nonwinning tickets after that. Security is of the utmost concern at the Iowa Lottery -- people play our games because they understand the integrity behind our products. We work hard to ensure that everyone has the same fair shot at winning.
 
The bottom line is, big winners happen all over the state at various retail locations, and higher ticket sales at a particular location do mean more winners there as well. Some busy locations where scratch tickets are sold sell several times as many tickets as others, and therefore cycle through ticket packs more often - creating more winners.

We keep a complete list of winners on our website, as well as a list of all the remaining prizes in our instant-scratch games.
 
We always encourage our players to remember the entertainment that lottery games have provided them and the help that lottery proceeds have meant to the state of Iowa. Players not only are playing a lottery ticket in the hopes of winning money, they're entertaining themselves and enjoying the experience. Since the Iowa Lottery's start in 1985, our players have won more than $3 billion in prizes while the lottery has raised more than $1.4 billion for state programs.

‘Lucky’ Numbers In Powerball?

A suburban Chicago newspaper has conducted its own study of the numbers selected in Powerball drawings through the years and has an interesting take on what it all means to lottery players. Check out the Daily Herald’s story here.   

Explaining The Odds

We’ve talked about it here before, but probably the most common question we get is about the odds in lottery games, especially instant-scratch games.

Lottery players across Iowa win prizes each day, but everyone should remember that each play is based solely on random chance. There are many winning tickets, but your purchase does not guarantee a winner.

Let’s take the scratch game “Dough Plow” as an example. The overall odds of winning a prize in that $1 game are 1 in 4.65. So, the question we often get goes something like this: “The overall odds said 1:4.65, but I bought 5 tickets and I didn’t win, so your odds must be wrong.” In fact, they’re not.

The overall odds of winning on a scratch ticket apply to each ticket purchased in a game, not a series of tickets. So, if a scratch game has overall odds of winning of 1:3, that doesn't mean that if you buy three tickets that one will be a winner. It means that if you were to buy all of the tickets available in that game, approximately 1 in 3 of them would win a prize.
 
It’s also important to know that the distribution of tickets within our games is completely random. That’s part of the security process involved in running a lottery; not even our sales representatives who deliver tickets to stores know how many winning tickets are in a particular pack. So, there could be three winning tickets in a row in one of our games, and then several nonwinning tickets after that. Security is of the utmost concern at the Iowa Lottery -- people play our games because they understand the integrity behind our products.
 
The bottom line is, big winners happen all over the state at various retail locations, and higher ticket sales at a particular location do mean more winners there as well. Some busy locations where scratch tickets are sold sell several times as many tickets as others, and therefore replace ticket packs more often - creating more winners.

We keep a complete list of winners on our Web site, as well as a list of all the remaining prizes in our instant-scratch games.
 
We always encourage our players to remember the entertainment that lottery games have provided them and the help that lottery money has meant to the state of Iowa. Players not only are playing a lottery ticket in the hopes of winning money, they are entertaining themselves and enjoying the experience. Since the Iowa Lottery's start in 1985, its players have won more than $2.4 billion in prizes while the lottery has raised more than $1.2 billion for state programs.