drool slobber drool pieces of eight pieces of eight

Still haven't checked my Mega Millions tickets on the refrigerator ...

This has been distracting me. To play Powerball, I'll have to drive either north to Vermont (prettier) or south to Connecticut (uglier).

I don't know any tricks (or magicke) to increase my chances of winning.

BUT ... I do know a trick so that if I do win, I won't have to share the Jackpot with a lot of other icky winners. If I win, the Jackpot will be MINE! All MINE!

Almost everybody plays Birthdays. Numbers involving Birthdays only go up to 31. But most of these games let you pick numbers larger than 31 ... sometimes into the 40s or 50s.

So I always pick one or more numbers that are bigger than 31. So if I do win, I'll probably be the only guy who played those > 31 numbers. Or there'll be very few other winners who did.

**********

USA Today
Sunday 16 October 2005

Ticket frenzy on
as Powerball pot
hits $340 million

By William M. Welch

The jackpot in Wednesday's [19 October 2005] Powerball lottery will be the game's biggest ever, an estimated $340,000,000, and sellers are bracing for a rush of ticket buyers hoping to strike it rich.

There was no winner matching all six numbers in Powerball's Saturday night drawing, when a prize worth more than $300 million produced big ticket sales in the more than two-dozen participating states.

"Lottery sales are going great. It's just a mess," Dennis Thornton, owner of L.A.'s Milk Depot in Scottsdale, Ariz., said Sunday.

Thornton said he faced big lines of buyers before Saturday's drawing.

"People are all over the place, buying for themselves and for pools," Thornton said.

At Thiensville Mobile Mart in Thiensville, Wis., clerk Matthew Sullivan said ticket sales had slowed on Sunday but predicted they would pick up again as Wednesday drew close. He said he sold more lottery tickets than ever on Saturday.

"There was more than $800 (in sales) in an eight-hour shift," he said. "Usually, the whole day doesn't do past $200."

Powerball said players bought more than $103 million in tickets between Thursday and Saturday night.

The jackpot exceeds the game's previous high of $314.9 million won on Dec. 25, 2002. It comes less than two months after an Aug. 28 game change intended to produce bigger and faster-growing jackpots and give Powerball a potential competitive advantage with other state and multistate lotteries. The change increased the possible number combinations and the odds of winning, while also boosting prizes.

Powerball is played in 27 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Odds of winning the grand prize are

1 in 146,107,962

Another multistate game, Mega Millions, is played in 12 states from New York to California. It had a record jackpot of $363 million in May 2000.

© Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.