The Lotter – Online Lottery Tickets Agent »
The Powerball game has a shared jackpot and is drawn bi-weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The purpose of the game is to guess five numbers in the range of 1 to n-59 in any order and one additional number in the range of 1 to n-39 exactly. The odds are not in your favor because the probability of winning is 35 to 1, but here are some Powerball winning tips that can help:
- Try to pick numbers that have not played recently. Chances are that no lottery results from the previous week will come up again.
- Play only with the budget that you can afford to lose because the odds are not in your favor.
- Avoid picking the same number twice including the Powerball number.
- Improve your winning chances by including three odd and three even lottery numbers. This way you will have a more balanced game.
- Don’t choose numbers that share the same last digits, for example: 3-23-43-53-33. Such string of numbers decreases your chances significantly.
- Don’t rely upon a machine; pick your own winning numbers. All five numbers picked by the machine is a very poor choice of numbers.
- And of course the last one would be to place your lottery ticket in a safe place until you find out the results. There are plenty of cases where people misplaced their lottery tickets and don’t have the opportunity to claim their winnings.
In the USA the following are the largest single lump sum payouts:
* Andrew J. Whittaker Jr. of West Virginia, won $314.9 million in the Powerball drawing of December 25, 2002. Opting as most large prize winners in the U.S. do for the lump sum, his after-tax prize was $114 million.
* Geraldine Williams from Lowell, Mass. is the largest single Mega Millions winner, at $294 million. The $168 million lump sum she opted for was reported as $117.6 million after taxes.
* Harold and Helen Lerner of New Jersey also claimed a higher after-tax lump sum than Whittaker in Mega Millions for the September 16, 2005 drawing, as New Jersey then had no state tax on lottery prizes. They chose to receive $156 million in cash instead of the $258 million face value. Then there is a 25 percent federal withholding tax[citation needed], which left them with around $117 million.
* The October 19, 2005 Powerball drawing won by nine members of the West and Chaney families of Medford, Oregon was for a larger annuity ($340 million) but a smaller lump sum than Whittaker’s.
* On February 22, 2008, Robert and Tayne Harris of Portal, Georgia claimed the only Mega Millions jackpot ticket, with an annuity value of $270 million (cash value $167 million) before taxes. After 25% percent federal withholding and 6% state withholding, they were left with around $115 million.
Back down under in OZ, 74-year-old won an amazing $50 million lottery jackpot. BRian Caswell a keen amateur gardener said that he’d likely spend part of his jackpot prize employing a gardening expert to teach him how to grow better carrots.
Mr Caswell told reporters that for years depsite his success in many other garden vedge that he’s just always struggled with carrots. Brian spends hours every day outside at his prize-winning allotment. Together with his wife their retirement has been filled with endless enjoyable days maintaining the patch with Joan, 71 near their home in Halliwell.
“I’ve been trying to grow carrots ever since I’ve been on that allotment and I’ve never had any success,” he said. He said the couple had decided to go public with the news of their huge win in last Friday’s Euromillion draw on the advice of lottery operator Camelot.
“How could you keep that secret?” he said. “The answer is you can’t.” His wife said she was still adjusting to her sudden wealth, which saw the couple’s win splashed on the front of the Sun and the Daily Mirror newspapers.
“What I’m going to do now is bring a professional in and say, ‘Right, sort that out’.”
In Canada Lottery life it was a case of good and bad news for Barry Shell. The good news was when he discovered that he’d won over $4 million in the lotto, the bad news was that by the end of the day he’d ended up arrested and placed in jail. Barry Shell, from Brampton, Ontario in Canada chose to pick up his winning check for $4,377,298, which was the jackpot prize in the July 18 draw for the Lotto 6/49.
“I went to the store and checked my ticket on the self-serve ticket checker,” Shell was quoted as saying in a news release from the Ontario Loterie and Gaming Corporation. “As soon as I saw how much I had won, I grabbed a pen and signed my ticket.”
On Monday afternoon, a happy and joyous Barry Shell was published in a photo holding up his winning check outside the OLG headquarters on Dundas Street West in Toronto. After the photo was taken he walked away from the building and straight into the waiting arms of the local Peel Police officers. Shell was apparantly wanted by police on a six-year-old charge for failing to appear in court in relation to a theft of $5,000 and being in possession of property obtained through crime.
According to a spokesman for the OLG, every lottery winner undergoes a security check, and if anything is turned up during the course of the investigation the matter is turned over to the Ontario Provincial Police. Shell, 45, was held overnight and appeared in court on Tuesday. He has been charged and released.
The news release said Shell “has no immediate plans for the windfall.”
More budgeting tips from a guest writer:
Never dip into your savings in the hope of winning the lottery. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. Spending your life savings won’t help you if you lose it all. Only spend what you can afford to lose.
When you buy one lottery ticket, your odds of winning go from zero to one-in-eighteen million or so. When you buy two lottery tickets, your odds of winning go from one-in-eighteen million to two-in-eighteen million. The numbers improve, but you need to buy literally thousands to see a significant increase in your chances.
By all means, get in the game. But remember that buying a hundred tickets per week doesn’t increase your odds of winning that much. Bear in mind the more tickets you buy the more chance your sharing your list of numbers with someone else.
So, in short, the important budgeting tip here, is spend only what you can afford to spend and only on the numbers you really want to play.
We’ve spent a lot of time giving you tips and tricks on how you should play the lottery and how to ensure the lottery results suit you. I now think its the right time to give you some tips on how not to play the lottery.
- Never choose lottery numbers that have recently won. Many people think that winning numbers can be lucky for coming draws and so are more likely to come up again. This is far from the truth even though many lottery players still do it.
- Never choose lottery numbers based on an mathematical sequences, such as 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, or 01, 11, 21, 31, 41, 49. People like number patterns – you may or may not be surprised at how many other lottery players choose their numbers like this. If you do and you win, don’t be shocked at how little you come home with after sharing your bounty with thousands of others.
- Never choose lottery numbers according to the many online ‘tip’ websites, just think how many subscribers they have and how many you’ll need to share your prize with.
- Never choose lottery numbers purely according to family birthdays. Enormous numbers of lottery players choose the day of the birthday of family members when selecting lottery numbers. But there are only 31 days at most in a month – which means an awful lot of people pick all their numbers in that range.
- Never make a pattern on your lottery card itself. Diagonal and horizontal lines or any other patter such as; stars, boxes, etc. You may think it’s original, trust me its not. You may win but your lottery winnings will be shared and reduced.
Part 2 of our July Lottery Tips – Group Lottery Play
Group play or lottery syndicates as they’re commonly know have some great advantages.
Initially the capital risk is divided between players and the work is generally also be divided. Getting input and brainstorming from a number of “minds” can give you a more choice of methods of play than you’d have if it’s just you alone. Many large lottery jackpots are won by lottery syndicates.
Bear in mind the fun aspect of playing the lottery online, group play is always going to have at least the potential (until things get serious) to be more social and more fun than playing alone.
The flip side of the coin for group lottery play is that there’s a chance that you could become the work horse for the group which could lead to resentment if you win. You can also find that sometimes people who are bad losers become tiresome and negative, these people should be removed from group over time if possible. Positivity is critical when working together as it may take some time and some investment before you see the profit.
Take into account when forming a group that the person holding the tickets can claim the prize! Your lottery syndicate should have a legally signed agreement about who gets what and who has what responsibility within the lottery syndicate.
Many people select their lottery numbers using random methods, or pick their loved one’s birthdays. But others look for a more scientific approach to selection.
My boss uses this lottery number calculator and recommends it as simple, quick and reliable.
If you want a complete random number generator, one of our readers sent in this lottery number generator. Whatever you choose, remember lottery is a game of fun, chance, but also one that if played seriously can seriously improve your bank balance
