Do you have Powerball Fever? What the ABC video to decide.

ABC news has produced an excellent series of videos titled "Powerball Fever" that covers a variety of interesting topics about the current Powerball Fever that is sweeping the country. These include:

• the current jackpot
• buying tickets
• what to do if you win
• past winners
• what you could to buy
• your chances to win
• and more.

They provided us the links to embed this video which we've included below.

Note that although the initial frozen image and leading advertisements may be the same, each of the videos are different.

Watch More News Videos at ABC | 2012 Presidential Election | Entertainment & Celebrity News

So, if you are dreaming of winning the $425 million jackpot, you need watch this clip to see if you are suffering from "Powerball Fever" yourself.

Good luck to all !!!
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JL ............

Reminder: We do not buy lottery tickets or send players money

During the past month or so, we noticed that an enthusiastic player from Australia was obtaining our Lottery Power Picks for various lottery games. Since we do not cover the Australian lotteries, we were curious as to why this member would be interested in the US Hot Lotto, Irish Lotto, Euro Millions and other games.

This weekend we learned why. For some reason, this player did not read through our site and learn that they must purchase their own lottery tickets for individual drawings in order to be eligible to win prizes.

Instead, they misunderstood our research offerings and believed that we would simply send them money if they had a winning combination. (Ah, free money. Everyone would like to have that).

As luck would have it, this player obtained several winning combinations for the above lotteries. However, they did not purchase lottery tickets for the individual games, and thus, all potential winnings were only on paper (i.e. fantasy lottery winnings).

Additionally, the person believed that we would simply send them money for their efforts. Thus, they sent us a note providing us with their address and asked us to send them a check.

Unfortunately for them, Lottery Power Picks is in the information dissemination business only. We research various lottery games and offer our advice to players.

Here in the United States, it is illegal: to operate a lottery (for free, money, or prizes); or, to purchase lottery tickets for others. Thus, all of our members who obtain recommended lottery numbers from us must purchase their own lottery tickets directly from an authorized lottery agent in the various states, countries, or territories. For good reason, we do NOT provide any of these services.

Additionally, we do NOT charge players for our services nor do we expect players to send us a commission if they are lucky enough to win.

The only thing that we ask of our winning players in return for our free advice is to tell everyone that they "got their numbers from Lottery Power Picks". (Although, donations are genuinely appreciated).

Try Our New Lottery Power Picks Beta Website

We've been very busy the past few months rewriting our website. Although it is not yet complete, we believe that it has sufficient functionality that will be of major benefit to you. Therefore we are releasing the Beta version of it for your use. You can access it at:

Lottery Power Picks - Beta Release

At present, it is missing many descriptive titles and definitions. But, the analytical content is mostly complete and we believe it is fully accurate.

You can access each of our covered lotteries using the collapsible menu bar on the left of the page. Simply click on a title and you will see the lotteries under that category. Then, click on the lottery game you wish to view. Once done, you will be presented with 6 tabs across the top of the page which will give you various statistics, graphs, advice, and more.

If you are already a member, you may log in to the system and obtain our recommended Lottery Power Picks.

We have not yet added the "Join" functionality. This means that if you are new to the system,  you will have to join using our legacy home page.

We hope you try out our site and find its content useful. Over the upcoming months, you will see new content being added and the blanks being filled in.

Five notes though:

1. The site relies heavily on javascript, which means that more computing will be preformed locally on your computer.
2. The site is best viewed using: Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. 
3. It doesn't work thoroughly on IE. Thus, we recommend you use one of the 3 browsers above.
4. The "Change View" pull down menu functionality is not complete yet.
5. Pick 3 lottery analysis is not completed either. 

Let us know what you think!

JL.............

68 Match 5 Mega Millions winners but the 21 in California get low pari-mutuel payouts

What seems to be a record number of the 2nd place Mega Millions winners in the March 20, 2012 drawing illustrates two important lottery oddities.

First, we find that a total there was a total of 68 winners who matched the 5 white balls and won the second tier prize. The white ball numbers drawn were: 01 04 06 11 14. These are classified as "Birthday" numbers because they can all be made from the numbers of the month and the day of month.

In choosing numbers to play, many people use important dates as their numbers.  While we do not know if the majority of winners picked their own numbers, we suspect that they did. This would certainly account for the large amount of winners. However, if most of the winning tickets were generated as Quick Picks, we would have to question the random number generator being used. Most likely though, most of the winners  played their favorite numbers and not quick picks.

Looking at the increase in the annuity jackpot prize by $49 million, we can also estimate that there were approximately 98 to 100 million tickets were sold. Given that number, we would expect to have 25 to 26 match 5 winners. But, since we have 2.6 times that amount, the Birthday Number Theory provides a sound explanation.

The low prize payout to the 21 California winners highlights the second oddity which is because of pari-mutuel payouts in that State. Normally, a Mega Millions match 5 winner without the Megaplier Option would receive $250,000.  But, California pays out the Mega Millions prizes on a pari-mutuel basis (not a fixed prize level). This means that the payout fluctuates depending on the number of winners. The fewer the winners, the higher the prize; and, the more the winners, the lower the prize.

Because of this, the California winners will receive $56,382 each, almost 5 times less than the 47 winners in the other States.  

When multiplying the $56K times the 21 winners, it appears that California expected to see 4 to 5 winners in this tier that would have won $250,000. But because there were 21 winners, they all had to share the allocated prize amount equally which substantially reduced their earnings.

We can learn 2 things from these results:

• First, many people play their birthday numbers which are often duplicates,
• Second, try not to buy tickets in California if you live on a border state where the payouts are fixed.

Lastly, we wish to congratulate all of last night's Mega Millions winners on a job well done!

Possible Results Delay because of Hurricane Irene? Luckily no - all are updated.

With Hurricane Irene approaching, we prepared the post below to keep you informed of our site's updating. We are happy to say that as of approximately 2:10AM, we have updated all Saturday night results on Lottery Power Picks. We thought we would publish this post just to keep you informed of our thinking.

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We're not sure if Hurricane Irene is going to disrupt our cable & power overnight. If it does, we will not be able to update our Lottery Power Picks results until access is restored.

We will make every attempt to update the site as earliest as possible when we can.

Until then, good luck to everyone and hope you are all safe.

Update: 

Sunday, 12:10AM - Canada 649 & California Super Lotto Plus Results updated and posted. We are still awaiting official jackpot offerings for Powerball & Hot Lotto. However, if the power goes out, the numbers are:

• Powerball : 02 12 25 54 58 Powerball 14 and Powerplay 3x 
• Hot Lotto: 05 17 22 29 37 Hot Ball 09

Sunday, 1:10AM - Hot Lotto now posted as well. Now we are only awaiting for the official Powerball jackpot to be posted.

Sunday, 2:10AM - Powerball now posted as well.

We will be updating this blog shortly.

Cheers & Good night! 

US Hot Lotto and UK Thunderball draw same five white balls on Saturday night

We often hear about the same numbers being drawn in various Pick 3 games, but it is extremely rare that two larger lottery games draw the same numbers. Even more rare is having the same combination drawn on the same night.

Well, that's exactly what happened on Saturday, August 20, 2011. First, the UK Thunderball white ball combination of:

6 7 11 22 33

was drawn. Then, a few hours later, the US Hot Lotto rolled out the same identical 5 white numbers.

We wrote about this rare event in our Bimonthly blog post: Same 5 lottery numbers are drawn on same night in two different lottery games.

But, we think this news is worth repeating in case you missed it!

Lotto 649 Draws All Hot Numbers

For the first time since we first introduced our Hot Cold Analysis pages in July 2009, the Canadian Lotto 649 game drew all hot numbers on Saturday, July 9, 2011. Not only were the 6 white balls classified as hot, but a hot bonus ball was drawn as well.  For that drawing, we identified 10 white balls as being hot and 7 hot bonus balls.

• Hot white numbers:  04, 07, 15, 23, 27, 31, 33, 36, 45, 48
• Hot bonus numbers: 05, 08, 22, 25, 29, 37, 39

If someone or group had played our hot white numbers, they would have purchased 210 total combinations. This would have cost C$420 and the lucky players would have collected the C$32 million jackpot prize. 


Since nobody won that night, the jackpot has increased to C$40 for Wednesday night.

Other games that previously selected our hot numbers were: California Super Lotto Plus, and Mega Millions (twice)!

Note to our EuroMillions Players

We discovered a formatting error in our Euro Millions Lucky Starts this weekend that was caused when we increased our recommendations to include the new numbers LS 10 and 11. This has now been corrected and everything is displaying properly.  We apologize for the inconvenience and recommend that you re-examine your numbers once again.

And, to everyone else, please don't forget that EuroMillions drawings will now be held every Tuesday and Friday nights. To help kick off interest, the first Tuesday EM drawing is tomorrow night and the jackpot is set at €100 million!

EuroMillions is Changing in May 2011

Beginning in the second week of May, the EuroMillions lottery will conduct two drawings per week, one on Tuesday and one on Friday nights. 

Concurrently, two slight format changes will be introduced:

• the two Lucky Stars will be numbered 1 to 11 (previously 1 to 9), and
• a lower tier prize of €3 will be paid to those matching 2 white balls only.

The cost of the tickets will remain at €2 each and the minimum jackpot will still be €15 million.

The first drawing with these adjustments will be held on Tuesday, May 10, 2011.

During the upcoming weeks, we will modify all of our analytical pages to reflect these changes.

Cheers!

Two New Pick 3 Games Released

We are pleased to announce that we have added two new Pick 3 pages to our site. These are the:

• Arizona Pick 3
• Iowa Pick 3

Besides adding these games, we have modified our Pick 3 layout slightly. First, we reversed the positions of our recommended number and results panels which are located at the top of the page. Second, we increased the number of the drawing results from 6 to the 28 drawings. Third, we have added the monthly breakdowns to our "Delta Occurances" panel located in the middle of the page.

Besides the two new games above, you can continue to access our analysis of the North Carolina, New Jersey and Texas Pick 3 games using the original links below.

• North Carolina Pick 3
• New Jersey Pick 3
• Texas Pick 3

In our next release, we will be adding the Missouri and California Pick 3 games. Afterward, we plan to add the Idaho, Vermont, West Virginia, and Florida Pick 3 games.

We hope you enjoy these new additions to our offerings and that they help you win more frequently!

JL............

Introducing Our New Navigation Menu

During the past weekend, we began to install our new Navigation Menu at the top of many of our pages. The menu initially consists of a "Home" link, two pull down menus, a "Goto Page" button, and the page name that will be visited.

The first pull down menu identifies the game that you wish to see. The second pull down indicates the type of information you want to see, such as History, Analytic, Multiplier, Odds pages, etc. Depending on the choice here, another pull down menu may or may not be displayed.

If we have a page that satisfies your selection criteria, the page name will be shown on the right. If we do not have a page yet, an error message will be shown.

We hope that the addition of this new navigation menu will assist you in locating and visiting all of the pages that we provide for you. Additionally, as new lotteries and pages are added to our site, this new Navigation Menu will be automatically updated for your use.

All Eyes on Lottery Drawings Tonight & Tomorrow

Lottery jackpots across North America and Europe are at record levels and it is no wonder that everyone on both continents will be eagerly searching for the drawing results during the next two days.

Tonight, the Friday drawings to watch are the:

• Highest is Mega Millions, which increased its jackpot from $304 to $312 million. This ranks in 6th place on its highest MM jackpot scale. The drawing is tonight and we expect this jackpot to be increased once again before the drawing is held.
• Second highest offering is tonight's Euro Millions cash prize of €133 million which is the 3rd highest in its history. This level was achieved through natural growth as opposed to a bonus offering.
• Canada's Lotto Max jackpot is C$43. While not a record, it is a worthy prize for those players.

Tomorrow night's drawings are somewhat lower in scale, but we know that these are very enticing as well. Saturday night lottery results that will be followed are:

• Powerball, who leads the pack with a $125 million jackpot.
• Irish Lotto offering €14 million which is tied for 5th place in its history, and
• California's Super Lotto Plus jackpot of $17 million.

This is a great way to end the last weekend of March.

By the way, do you think the Supermoon had anything to do with the growth of these jackpots?

Two Lotto 649 Players Share C$41M Prize Matching Sleeper Combination

It's not too often that the Lotto 649 jackpot grows to C$41 million and is then won by a sleeper. But that's exactly what happened in the Saturday February 19th 2011 drawing.

The excitement ran through Canada as nobody won a 649 jackpot since January 22nd. In this 8th drawing since that date, or 4 weeks later, the numbers began to pop up. When it was done, the all even combination of:

10 16 20 26 34 48  and bonus ball 40

appeared. Surprisingly, two tickets from Quebec matched this straight 6 number draw, and now each one shares half of the C$41M.

The last two times all 6 numbers were even in this lottery were on October 16 and March 10 2010, but jackpot was not won either time.  As a reference, there are only 134,596 all even combinations in Lotto 649. This represents only 1% of all the available 13,983,816 numbers. So, this is indeed a sleeper combination!

Congratulations to the winners!

Introducing the USA State Lottery Promotions Calendar

During the past few years, we have noticed that various lottery states offer a variety of promotions to their players. But, it has always been difficult for many of us to see what is available without going from site to site.

So, we have decided to take advantage of Google's Calendar facility to record and share this information with you.

At present, we have just begun to enter the promotions. But, we were very excited to release this information with you as a work in progress.

The calendar is shown below. In time, we will be adding it to new pages on our blogs and website.





Hope you like it!

JL............

Thunderball, Super Lotto Plus & Texas 2 Step Full Wheel Calculators Now Available

For the second phase of our Full Wheel Payout Calculator releases, we have posted three new pages for your reference. These are the:

• California Super Lotto Plus Full Wheel Calculator
• Texas Two Step Full Wheel Calculator
• UK Thunderball Full Wheel Calculator

Each of these three games, along with our previously issued Mega Millions, Powerball, and Hot Lotto calculators, provide you the ability to compare winning payouts both with and without the corresponding bonus ball.

Besides accessing these tools from the above links, you can find these calculators from the Lottery Research Page.

The next phase of our release will focus on the 6 white ball lottery games: Texas Lotto, Canada Lotto 649, Irish Lotto, and the UK Lotto.

Enjoy!

Mega Millions & Powerball Full Wheel Calculators Revised

Since we released the first round of our Full Wheel Payout Calculators last week, we discovered that the payouts displayed for matching the 5 white balls but not the Mega or Power ball were incorrect when the Powerplay or Megaplier were purchased. We've now corrected those calculations.

• Mega Millions Full Wheel Calculator
• Powerball Full Wheel Calculator
• Hot Lotto Full Wheel Calculator 

As a reminder, you can visit these calculators from: the links directly above; the Lottery Research Page; and the "Lottery Combo Tables" link on our Lottery Power Picks home page.

Our next release will include the UK Thunderball, California Super Lotto Plus, and the Texas Two Step lottery games. We expect to make these Full Wheel Calculators available within the next week.

Megaplier Coming to New Jersey

When the Mega Millions lottery expanded into all the Powerball states last year, the Megaplier was immediately offered in the Powerball States. But, of the original Mega Millions States, it was only available in Texas (who started this feature). But, slowly, during the year, more and more of the original 12 have (or will soon have) added the Megaplier option.

The latest State to announce this feature is New Jersey. It doesn't have a set date, but their website says its Coming Soon.

Other Mega Millions States that now offer the Megaplier are: Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusettts, Michigan, (New Jersey), New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

It seems that the only State that will not be offering this feature yet is California.

Full Wheel Payout Calculators to be Released this Week

During the past few months, we have been working on a series of Full Wheel Calculators specifically customized for each of our covered lotteries. As we are now completing the first group, we anticipate releasing these new pages for Mega Millions, Powerball, and Hot Lotto.

We are very excited about these since each provides a high level of user interaction. Players who are interested in wheeling subsets of numbers will be able to understand how much money they will need to spend to buy the wheel. More importantly, they will obtain immediate results about the potential winnings they may receive if they choose and wheel the correct numbers.

Stay tuned to this blog for our full release announcement during the next couple of days!

Current Mega Millions Jackpot Tied for 6th Place All Time High

While many had predicted that the days of large jackpots were over, the current Mega Millions jackpot ranks 6th in the all time Mega Millions (Big Game) History.

The drawing on Tuesday January 4, 2011 will be the 18th since the last Mega Millions jackpot was won on November 9, 2010. Below are listed the actual size of the jackpots won, the advertised level, where the tickets were sold, and the dates.

• $390M - 370 GA/NJ Mar 06 2007 (MM)
• $336M - 325 CA/NY Aug 28 2009 (MM)
• $330M - 330 MD/NJ/TX/VA Aug 31 2007 (MM)
• $325M - 325 GA/IL/NJ Apr 16 2002 (Big Game)
• $315M - 315 CA Nov 15 2005 (MM)
• $294M - 290 MA July 02 2004 (MM)
• Current Jackpot - $290 Million (MM)
• $275M - 270 GA Feb 22 2008 (MM)
• $270M - 267 OH Feb 28 2006 (MM)
• $266M - 266 CA May 4 2010 (MM)
• $265M - 265 OH Apr 18 2006 (MM)
• $258M - 250 NJ Sep 16 200 (MM)

Related articles

• Mega Millions jackpot grows to $290 million (ajc.com)
• Mega Millions jackpot and lottery sales glitter (boston.com)

Hot Lotto Jackpot is Third Highest Ever

Image via Wikipedia

There has been 60 drawings since the last Hot Lotto jackpot of was last won on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010. That lucky winner was from South Dakota and won $10.02 million. 

This Wednesday's annuity is now estimated to be worth $15.9M. If won, this will be the 3rd highest payout since the game began in 2002. The previous record Hot Lotto jackpots are summarized below.

• The game's highest prize was $19.97 million and was sold in Iowa in the January 13, 2007 drawing.
• The second largest jackpot was won on August 22nd, 2009. The winning ticket was worth $16.94M and was sold in Delaware.

If someone wins this week, they will have the option to: take this $15.90M annuity and receive 25 payments of $0.636 million each; or to receive a cash payout of $10.28 million. Good luck to all during this Christmas week!