In the meantime, changes are afoot for the young game, with those changes coming on line September 17th. The game will have three more balls in the white ball field, and twenty-two more lucky balls; giving the game 43 numbers in each field. As a result, the game is about to get harder to win; overall odds being increased modestly to about 1 in 8, but top prize odds going up almost threefold to about 1 in 41 million (up from about 1 in 14 mil).
What are these changes for? Bigger lower tier prizes? Maybe $1,000,000/year for life? Odds like this could support such a prize.
No, that'd be too obvious. All of these extra numbers are being added for big increases to the second prize. That's right, not the lower tier prizes, not the jackpot, the second prize. It will go up from $25,000 cash, to $25,000 cash per year for life. A few other prizes are getting modest increases to compensate for the longer odds (new prize amounts are underlined):
| Match | Prize | Odds |
|---|---|---|
| Match 5+1 | $7,000/week/life | 1:41,391,714 |
| Match 5+0 | $25,000/year/life | 1:985,517 |
| Match 4+1 | $3,000 (from $2K) | 1:217,851.13 |
| Match 4+0 | $150 (from $100) | 1:5,186.93 |
| Match 3+1 | $100 (up from $50) | 1:5,887.87 |
| Match 3+0 | $10 | 1:140.19 |
| Match 2+1 | $20 (up from $15) | 1:490.66 |
| Match 2+0 | $2 | 1:11.68 |
| Match 1+1 | $5 | 1:112.15 |
| Match 0+1 | $4 | 1:82.46 |
Yeah, that second prize is getting a big boost; but very few other prizes are going up that much. The top prize and four of the bottom five prizes aren't going up at all. The prize for matching just the Lucky Ball is staying pat at $4, despite being twice as hard to win; and as I mentioned before winning the grand-a-day-for-life is getting almost three times harder to win. You can see just how much emphasis is being put on this new runner-up prize by comparing the percentages of sales that go towards each prize:
| Prize Level | Old | New |
|---|---|---|
| Match 5+1 | 27.81% | 10.27% |
| Match 5+0 | 1.81% | 27.90% |
| Match 4+1 | 1.27% | 0.69% |
| Match 4+0 | 1.27% | 1.45% |
| Match 3+1 | 1.08% | 0.85% |
| Match 3+0 | 4.31% | 3.57% |
| Match 2+1 | 3.55% | 2.04% |
| Match 2+0 | 9.47% | 8.56% |
| Match 1+1 | 4.74% | 2.23% |
| Match 0+1 | 4.7% | 2.43% |
If you're not good with numbers, let me break that down. Nearly half of the prize pool (60% of sales) is going to the second prize. Second prizes have usually been the most neglected when it comes to dividing the take. Powerball turned that around last year by putting almost a fifth of the prize pool into the $1,000,000 second prize. That may not be as much of the pool as the jackpot gets, but it's way more than the other prizes get. LfL has now decided that even the top prize should take a back seat to the second prize; and about that prize, $25,000 per year is not that much money, especially after Uncle Sam gets his cut. They sacrificed every other prize category so they could do this. Granted, you can get a lump-sum in this version which you couldn't before; but that's doesn't help much because despite increased odds, the other prizes are pretty much staying where they are. Solid A game, about to go down a whole letter grade. I give this new LfL is a B-.
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