Thursday, December 20, 2012

New Feature coming to Lotto Texas

In my opinion, the best add-on to a game anywhere is the Xtra feature in Florida Lotto. It not only betters your odds of winning something, but it also raises your expected return from 50% to 60%.

Well, something very similar is coming to Lotto Texas, according to a rules change proposal. It will increase non-jackpot prizes as well as a prize for matching 2 numbers (provided you pay the extra dollar). The difference is that instead of a multiplier, each prize category will have a set prize amount. In addition, matching 2 out of 6 will win $2 cash (Florida pays out a free Lotto ticket with Xtra). The actual amounts are as follows:

MatchPrize
6/6Not Applicable
5/6Regular Prize + $10,000
4/6Regular Prize + $100
3/6$13
2/6$2

Now when this is launched, should you buy it? That is, should you pay the extra dollar? This does raise your rate of return, but only to 51.85%. But considering Lotto Texas contributes less than 10% of sales to lower tier prizes, I'd say Extra is a good buy. Much more of your money will go towards the lower tier prizes (the prizes you might actually win); and along with the $2 prize, getting Extra will play to your advantage.

5 comments:

  1. I'm waiting to hear of your "review" of the new "Hot Lotto" game, available in 15 jurisdictions (perhaps more when that game is relaunched on Mother's Day 2013); the "Sizzler" tripler will continue. Under the new rules, a "Sizzler" second prize becomes $90,000. My Connecticut "Classic Lotto" is expected to have a new format soon as well; no details, but I had suggested to the CT Lottery a higher second prize in Classic Lotto. BTW, I live about 10 miles from Newtown/Sandy Hook, so my heart goes out to the victims and their families.

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  2. I haven't heard anything about the new Hot Lotto except from Wikipedia. And since that entry was uncited, I'm going to take my chances and wait for some more sources. It's probably accurate, but I don't want to take any chances.

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  3. LG: The North Dakota Lottery has the official revised HL rules within their website; given your knowledge about lotteries, you should have little trouble finding it. (November 19 meeting.)

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  4. Yep, it's all there. Thanks. I'll post about sometime in the near future.

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