Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Powerball doubling cost
Maybe you heard that already, that the Powerball lottery is going up in price by a dollar--doubling in price from $1 to $2. In a way, no big deal. At least for those who don't play. And that's why I write today--for those who do. First, do you know what the odds of winning are? The odds of winning the Powerball lottery, as their official website will tell you, is one in 195,249,054. Yow. Very nearly one in 200,000. Think about that.
Imagine you're one person, standing in a crowd of nearly 200,000 people, each with a lottery ticket, and someone of authority is going to somehow pick you out of that crowd for whatever reason. In this case, it would be to win that prize. Now, do you see how likely--unlikely, really--that is? And sure someone has to win it, of course, and you can't play if you don't win. I'm just saying, spelling out how extremely unlikely it is, that's all. Not meaning to rain on anyone's parade. Links: http://fox4kc.com/2012/01/02/powerball-prices-double-so-does-starting-jackpot/; http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/pricey-picks-powerball-tickets-doubling-15269485; http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp; http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/02/powerball-tickets-to-double-in-price/
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3 comments:
We used to play a couple of times a month, knowing we wouldn't win, but it was fun to dream. Now we won't bother, because $2 is more money than we want to throw away.
That's what I'm thinking, that plenty won't play now. But you watch, it will likely stay just as winning because even though they doubled the cost, it makes for yet bigger jackpots and incrementally made it more likely you win. I don't know what the new odds are but it helped a bit because they went from 39 number options to 35.
That's just plain greed on their part and nothing more. For $1 you can still play the Megamillions. That's what a lot of people who used to play Powerball are starting to do. I'd play a few draws for the month but I'm not playing it anymore, though I won't go to Megamillions either. The odds still stink where I'm concerned even if the jackpots are higher. I'm going to try my hand at smaller lotteries where the odds are not so bs.
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