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May 20, 1992
LOTTO.ASC
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This file is from the June 1992 - Texas Monthly which was in turn
adapted from Austin entertainer Turk Pipkin's new book,
The Winner's Guide to the Texas Lottery.
It is published by Softshoe Publishing Company.
This copyrighted article in its' entirety is called Smart Money and
is written by Turk Pipkin. This file is to help those who plan to
indulge in the soon-to-be TEXAS lottery.
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from
Smart Money
by Turk Pipkin
Tip 1 - DON'T SPEND MORE THAN ONE PERCENT OF YOUR INCOME ON THE
LOTTERY - MAX! You may well find yourself tempted to
increase your chances by buying beaucoup lottery tickets.
But no ordinary person could ever buy enough tickets to
guarantee a win. Consider this: The most common lotto
game has 14 million betting combinations, so if you buy 1
ticket, the odds will be 1 in 14 million. If you buy 50
tickets, the odds will be 50 in 14 million. Does that
sound better? Only 1 in 54 tickets wins any prize at all.
So don't spend yourself into the poorhouse.
There is no correct or best or normal amount to bet.
Annual lottery sales per person vary around the country
from just $30 a year in Kansas to more than $250 in
Massachusetts. Limiting your spending to one percent is a
good rule of thumb. If you make $25,000 a year, that
works out to $250 a year, or about $5 a week - plenty of
opportunity for thrills and chills without breaking your
budget.
The best game plan is to play for the fun of it and for
your dreams, not because you seriously believe that you're
going to win. (Being certain that you're going to beat
the lottery is a little like hitting yourself in the head
with a ball peen hammer and being certain that it won't
hurt - except hitting yourself in the head with a hammer
doesn't cost a buck a whack.)
Tip 2 - DON'T SPEND ALL YOUR LOTTERY MONEY THE FIRST WEEK; THE
ODDS WILL GET BETTER. The first Texas Lottery game, Lone
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Star Millions, is an instant scratch-off game. It's easy
to play and just as easy to lose. You buy a ticket for $1
from a lottery vendor and scratch off the latex coating
that conceals dollar amounts printed in six small squares.
If three of those amounts match, you will win that much.
Odds and prizes range from 1 in 10 to win $2 to 1 in
600,000 to win $10,000. The overall odds of winning any
prize are 1 in 7.9. That's not exactly a consumer
bargain, and it won't be long before players figure that
out and tire of having only one chance of winning in every
eight plays.
Early burnout has been anticipated by the Texas Lottery's
advertising and operations contractors, who are masters of
marketing and lottery strategy. As sales fall off, they
plan to introduce new games with better odds to keep
players interested.
So while you may be tempted to bet heavily in the first
two games because they will offer $1 million grand prizes,
you should consider holding off. The third and fourth
games - scheduled to be introduced simultaneously late
this summer - will offer a double-prize feature and a
higher overall percentage of winners. Eventually, up to
six different instant games will be offered at any one
time.
The main thing to remember is to watch the payout odds -
which will be printed on the game brochures available at
all 15,000 initial ticket outlets. These odds will change
with each game, and you might as well concentrate on those
that offer you the best chance of winning. Many states
now offer instant games with very decent 1 in 4 overall
odds, and so will Texas. Watch for them.
Tip 3 - DON'T THROW AWAY A MILLION BUCKS! If you scratch off an
instant ticket and find three windows showing the word
"Entry" instead of a dollar amount, don't worry; you
haven't lost. In fact, you have a chance to win big.
Write your name and address on the back of the ticket and
mail it to the Texas Lottery (the address is also on the
back). Twelve drawings will be held in various locations
throughout the state, and the lucky winner will get
$100,000,000.
What are your chances? of 300 million tickets in game
one, 500,000 will be Entry tickets. That may not sound
great, but remember: Not everyone who gets an Entry ticket
will go to the trouble of mailing it in. That will
increase the chances of those who do, so keep those
tickets in.
Tip 4 - PLAY FOR FREE! Pay attention to the promotions that may be
offered by the lottery and by ticket vendors. For
instance, many retailers may offer "Ask for the Sale"
promotions, in which you get a free ticket if the clerk
forgets to ask if you would like to buy one. Participating
service stations will also be allowed to give away free
tickets with a fill-up of gas, and food stores can give
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free tickets for buying turkeys at Thanksgiving (and what
better symbol for a bunch of die-hard lottery players than
a bunch of frozen turkeys?). Don't pass up a free
opportunity.
Tip 5 - DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON WORTHLESS LOTTO SYSTEMS! This
fall we will see the introduction of the big game with the
giant jackpots - lotto, which is based on a centuries-old
gambling game that originated in Italy. The Lottery
Commission has yet to decide on the specifics, but the game
will probably be a 6/49 or 6/50 lotto. This takes a minute
to explain, so bear with me:
1) On each ticket, 49 or 50 numbers are printed; these
numbers are called the field.
2) From the field, a player selects 6 numbers, called
his pick.
3) Every Saturday night on live TV - possibly in the
commercial slot just before the ten o'clock news -
the Texas Lottery will use a special machine filled
with Ping-Pong balls bearing printed numbers to pick
six winning numbers.
Given the size of the potential prize - you may remember
Florida's $106.5 million - and the devastating odds against
winning - 1 in 14 million for 6/49 lotto; 1 in 16 million
for 6/50 - everyone wants a system. This is where you want
to be cautious. Hundreds of overpriced schemes are on the
market; pocket calculators, computer software, even lotto
biorhythm charts, all ballyhooed as ways to pick winning
numbers.
And those are the more plausible scams. Once the lottery
really gets going here, you can expect a cottage industry
to spring up offering to convert your birthday, your
astrological sign, and even more arcane phenomena, like
dates of sightings of the Loch Ness monster, into mystical
numbers that you can use to play lotto. Anyone who claims
to be able to see the future of a lotto drawing and offers
to sell you that information for $50 or $100 must be
generous indeed.
Worst of all, many mathematical systems can cost a bundle.
Some of them (many are sold through the mail) involve using
eight, nine, or ten numbers in complex betting combinations
that necessitate spending $20, $50, or $100 a week on
lotto.
Taking these methods seriously is just asking for trouble.
Don't spend big money on any system to pick your numbers.
Your odds are better if you put your money into tickets.
Tip 6 - DON'T PLAY FREQUENTLY BET NUMBERS! Since there is no sure
way to make lotto predictions, the most logical tactic is
to avoid sharing a jackpot in case your numbers are drawn.
Research shows that many if not most players select low
numbers. Why? Because they choose from the same small
group of numbers 1 through 12 (the months), 1 through
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31 (the days), and the number 19 (the century) are all
overplayed. Of those, 3, 7, and 11, all considered to be
lucky, are REALLY overused.
Another factor favoring low numbers is that people marking
play slips often make all six choices before they get above
the twenties or thirties. In one drawing of the Maryland
Lottery, 3,200 people played the numbers 1 through 6. If
those numbers had been chosen, the winners would have had
to split the $620,000 jackpot and would have won less than
$200 each. Conclusion: Play at least SOME high numbers.
Tip 7 - YOU CAN WIN WITH QUIKPICKS! The simplest way to pick your
numbers may well be the best: Let the computer do it for
you. All you have to do is tell your clerk at your lotto
ticket outlet that you want onr or more Quik Picks. He
pushes a button, and the machine picks six numbers for you,
charging a buck a ticket.
The reason this works is that playing Quik Picks guarantees
that you will have random numbers. That way you avoid the
pitfalls outlined in Tip 6, and you have less of a chance
of sharing a jackpot with all those other people. Surveys
in many states show that a majority of jackpot winners were
Quik Picks. How can this be? Because the majority of
lotto tickets sold WERE Quik Picks.
Tip 8 - ALWAYS CHECK THE WINNING LOTTO NUMBERS AGAINST YOUR
NUMBERS! Could anybody be dumb enough NOT to CHECK his
numbers? Well, YES! In 1989 a $5.4 million Illinois
jackpot went unclaimed for one year, was declared void, and
the money was returned to a pool for future prizes. Every
lottery state has had similar incidents.
How does this happen? Plenty of people ask the clerk for a
lottery ticket and get a lotto Quik Pick instead of the
instant ticket they wanted. They stick that ticket in
their wallet or purse and forget about it. And if they
regularly play Quik Picks instead of playing the same
numbers every time, they don't have the numbers committed
to memory, and they must check the current ticket to see if
they have won. Diggout out the tickets is more trouble,
but the rewards could be worth it.
Unclaimed prize money in Texas, you may be glad to hear,
also will BE RETURNED to the player's prize pool.
Tip 9 - PLAY LOTTERY POOLS! Lottery pools are groups of people -
family members, neighbors, co-workers - who pool their
money to buy more tickets than any of them could afford
individually. If any of the tickets wins a prize, everyone
shares the money. Whoever organizes the pool collects the
money, buys the tickets, and keeps a simple written
contract stating that winnings will be divided equally
among all members.
Say thirty people chip in $3 a week. Each of them now has
ninety opportunities to win a share of the jackpot, and no
one has spent a fortune. A $15 million jackpot split among
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thirty winners would pay each of them $20,000 a year for
twenty years, after taxes.
You may have read about a commercial Australian lottery
pool called the International Lotto Fund that won $27
million in March by covering all seven million combinations
in the Virginia Lottery. Smooth move, but every lottery in
the country has since changed its rules to prevent such
massive block buying of tickets. That means your own
lottery pool at home or work is still your best chance to
win.
Tip 10 - PLAY WHEN THE JACKPOT IS HIGH, BECAUSE SO IS THE VALUE OF
YOUR BET! When the lotto jackpot is not won for several
weeks, a fever grips the land. People who were previously
blase' wait in line for hours to buy tickets. The lottery
occupies the news, cocktail party conversation, and
valuable work time. It is blamed for everything short of
causing hens to quit laying.
Some people think that having more players in the game will
ruin their odds, but it's just not so. The odds of winning
remain unchanged. The odds of having to share the big
prize ARE higher, but since the jackpot is bigger, that
isn't such a big deal.
Maybe you'll win, maybe you won't. The point is that if
you play for fun, you can have a few thrills, and if you
play smart, you'll know you've done everything you can to
boost your chances. It's like life; the odds are against
you, but may the fours be with you.
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