New England Lucky For Life changes. Everybody loves a (near) winner.

It been a little more than a year since Lucky For Life launched, the realization of a decades-long push for a New England-wide lottery game (beginning with talks of pushing Tri-State Megabucks into CT, MA, and RI in the 80's). It seems to be reasonably popular, I saw a few LfL tickets being bought when I was in Providence a while back; and there's already plans for a second New England game (possibly a merger of Tri-State Megabucks, Mass. Megabucks, and CT Lotto).

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
Overall Odds: 1 in 8.607

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-.

Mega Millions Update!

As you may have heard, Mega Millions is going through some changes, with sales beginning October 19th and the first drawing the following Tuesday. Information has been slowly trickling in as the date approaches; but a little research uncovered all the juicy details. First the prizes and odds:

Yes, I did make that graphic, don't expect it to be a regular thing. But back to the topic at hand. As you can see it's a much different prize structure than it is now, but you can still win the same ways as now.

Also, while it is different, there is familiar tinge. The lower 4 prize levels are the same prize amounts as MM's predecessor The Big Game, albeit with different odds. For example, the odds of winning $5 in the last version of The Big Game were 1 in 156. Winning $5 here has overall odds of 1 in 292. On the flip side, winning a buck for matching the Mega Ball by itself will have odds around 1 in 21, compared to 1 in 62 in the old Big Game.

Now, take a look at those odds. As mentioned earlier, they're going to be massive; though as I mentioned in a previous post the odds of winning the jackpot with two $1 Mega Millions tickets will still be better than your odds of winning with one $2 Powerball. And overall odds will be better, 1 out of roughly 15 tickets will win something.

The best part of the changes, however, come with the Megaplier. Not only is it sticking around, but a 5x multiplier will be added. So while winning 2nd prize has roughly the same odds as winning a 6-from-51 lotto, the prize with Megaplier is like a 6-number lotto, too; one can win up to $5,000,000 cash if they add the Megaplier. Here are the odds of each factor for those interested:

While matching the Mega Ball has a disproportionate amount of importance (odds of winning without the Mega Ball: 1 in 704), there are only 15 of them and the overall odds of winning are not far from a larger pick-5 game. The Megaplier makes this game even more attractive, with bigger multipliers it's not unlike the old $1 Powerball. However, the odds of winning the bigger prizes keep it from really jumping out at me as a game to get excited about. That said, this is not a bad change either; which is good because one game out there is undergoing a needlessly bad change. More on that later...

Mega Millions: a quarter-billion to 1?!

First blog in quite a while, so there's a lot to talk about. CA Powerball players getting shortchanged (sometimes); Japan added a new game, I know a few people might be interested in that; plus I'm still meaning to write a few articles on lotteries in other countries, as well as one on the worst games of all time. Oh, and Illinois is changing Lucky Day Lotto to a twice-a-day game. I've never seen a jackpot game anywhere have two draws a day. That could be interesting.

But if I write one lottery blog this year, I'll make it about the changes Mega Millions will be going through this October. I heard on Lottery Post a little while ago that Michigan was drawing down the length of multi-draws that can be bought, a telltale sign that changes are being made (which makes sense with Florida finally in the game). I figured one of two things would happen: either they would cede the big jackpot crown to Powerball and go for a game that's easier to win, or really jack up the odds to bring it up to PB's level without changing the price. Apparently, it will be the latter. The game will be adding 19 white balls to the mix, bringing the number of white balls to 75! That's a lot of balls (I'm not going there, make your own joke). Though, to temper the mass of numbers on that end, the number of Mega balls are going down, from 46 down to just 15! That's very important regarding what the smaller prizes could end up being, but that's just speculation and I'll save that for the end.

What we know for sure is very little. The odds of winning the jackpot are going way, WAY up; from about 1 in 175 million, to just under 259 million to 1. But the price will remain at a dollar; and if you compare the odds of winning with $2 worth of tickets (1 in 129 million), it's still lower than the odds of winning Powerball on a $2 play (1 in 175 million). The odds of matching 5 white balls are also going way up, to 1 in about 18 and half million. That's more than a lot of in-state lotto games. Apparently, the prize for that will be $1 million, which would only take about 5.4% of sales to support, so the other prizes won't take as big a hit as Powerball's did when it went to $2 (up to $35 for matching 3 with $2 Powerplay, to no more than $14 with $3 PP now, what a joke).

That brings me to smaller prizes, namely, the smallest prizes. The article quotes a South Dakota official saying that the overall odds will stay at 1 in 40. Well, I've crunched the numbers, and I don't see how that's possible. If the prize structure remains like it is now, with a prize for matching just the Mega ball, or 3 or more white balls without the Mega ball, the overall odds of winning any prize would be roughly 1 in 14. Maybe the writer of the article misheard the number 14 and thought it was 40. That could be, but there are a couple of other scenarios. One is that the Mega ball-only prize is replaced with a prize for 2 white balls (without the MB), that would bring the overall odds to 1 in 20. The other premise is the ninth prize is ditched altogether, with no prize for matching just the MB or for just 2 white balls. The overall odds then would be 1 in 47. Those are the scenarios; call me cynical, but my money is on the ninth prize being ditched enitrely. The lottery officials probably want Mega Millions to appear "cheaper", so make it harder to win the jackpot, or to win anything. But I could be wrong.

And one other thing, what's going to happen to the Megaplier? I'm pretty sure it will still be around, I'm very curious what changes, if any, will be made. Could we see a $4,000,000 prize for 5 white balls? That would certainly disprove my thesis about making it look "cheaper". I don't know what's going through their minds right now, not much went through their minds when the re-designed Powerball; hopefully they'll show some brains with Mega Millions. Tell me what you think in the comment section below, I think more comments might motivate me to write more blogs. Fire away.

Changes to Hot Lotto & Wild Card 2

MUSL has been busy this year. They launched a new (but not improved) Powerball, and they've worked on changes on two of their other multi-state games. Wild Card 2 and Hot Lotto will both look different in 2013, I'll start with Wild Card 2 as it will be changing first (and very soon).

The changes will happen on January 13th, and they will be pretty modest. The amount of white numbers will increase to 33 (up from 31). The minimum jackpot will also double to $200,000. But other than a few other prize increases to account for the longer odds, not much else is changing. The states offering the game will still be the small club it is now; you'll still get two plays for $1; drawings will still be Wednesday and Saturday; and the field of Wild Cards will still just consist of the 16 face cards. Here are the new prizes and odds:

Match	Prize	Odds (per $1)
5+WC	Avg. $457,000	1:1,898,688
5	$6,000	1:126,579
4+WC	$500	1:13,562
4	$30	1:904
3+WC	$6	1:502
3	$2	1:33
2+WC	$2	1:58
1+WC	$1	1:19
WC Only	$1	1:19
Overall Odds (per $1): 1:6.67

Later on this year, Hot Lotto will also be changing. That will happen, tenatively, on May 12th; and they'll be a bit more radical than the changes to Wild Card. While the game will still have the same draw days and the same price; the jackpot prize will look very different. Instead of being a 25-year annuity; the advertised jackpot will now be the lump sum amount, after taxes. The amount you see on the billboard (if Hot Lotto had billboards) would be what you'd actually get if you won.

But that jackpot will be a lot harder to win; three times harder, in fact; as the amount of white balls will increase from 39 to 47. However, the number of "Hot" balls will still stay at 19; so the overall odds of winning a prize won't increase much.  The Sizzler will also stay, and will still triple all prizes. The new prize structure is as follows:

Match	Prize	Odds (per $1)
5+HB	Avg. $5.7 mil*	1:29,144,841
5	$30,000	1:1,619,158
4+HB	$3,000	1:138,785
4	$100	1:7,710
3+HB	$50	1:3,385
3	$6	1:188
2+HB	$6	1:254
1+HB	$3	1:52
HB Only	$2	1:34
Overall Odds (per $1): 1:17.22
*Lump sum, after 25% federal tax. State taxes not included in calculation.

As you may have noticed, there's still a matter of state taxes; that's going to create an interesting wrinkle. Because states have different tax rates (or none at all), many of the Hot Lotto states might be advertising different jackpots (as they will be advertising the after-tax prize). For example; in Delaware, where lottery winnings are not subject to state tax, they could advertise a jackpot of $2 million; but in Minnesota, which has a 7.25% state tax, they could be advertising a jackpot of about $1.8 million for the same draw. Now, I'm not sure if this is how it really will be; but quite frankly, I don't see a way around it. Could be something to ask MUSL about.