... on a Texas Lottery scratch-off ticket.

I asked her if she wanted to sponsor a race car ...


She is the cleaning lady for my building and the nicest person you might ever meet.

Good karma!

Wow - you never hear of those scratch offs hitting like that. I guess that $10k just isn't news worthy these days. I know that I'd sure appreciate it, though!

A few years back one of our security guards hit for $9600 or so (just a tick under $10k). But he probably spent $10k on tickets. They were ALWAYS running to the little store by the front door for tickets. I'm not sure he came out ahead.

My buddy's brother just hit $10k last month. Even if you bought $9,800 in scratchers it's like putting it in the bank for later use!

Here's the part I don't understand about lotteries.

There are only 120,526,770 possible combinations of numbers in the PowerBall lottery. Once the cash payout of the jackpot exceeds $120,526,770 why not buy a lottery ticket with every number on it. You are guaranteed of winning (not only the jackpot, but also every other smaller prize, which is usually upwards of $600k).

But, what about if someone has the same numbers? Well, if 100 million tickets are sold, there is only a 20% chance that 2 or more winning tickets will be sold.

So, it's kinda like being the casino. You may lose, but odds are that you will win.

I wonder why more millionaires don't do this? (However, I think that this may have something to do with the fact that I'm not a millionaire, yet.)

I've done the same math, Mathew. You have to factor in taxes, too. Unless somehow you can say that you spent x dollars to win y and use that as a write off.

I always through money in when our office decides to play (when pot is greater than 100M). As a group we'll get 60-100 tickets, which means my odds of winning are much greater. I don't care if I have to split the pot since I'd be almost as happy with 100k, 1M, or 100M. Any of them would be good. Actually 100M might be too much and I might become some asshole.

My neighbor did that before Christmas last year. Because of that ticket, he was in Aruba when it was 10* here... bastard.

I usually get a $5 quick pick when the Mega million gets over $50M. I don't know if I could retire for the rest of my life, but we could go racing every weekend until the money runs out. My dad has already called dibs on driving the toter-stacker...

I won the Polish lottery. I get a dollar a year for a million years. So I got that going for me.

Because no lottery machine can print 120m tickets quickly enough to permit the purchase of all possible combinations. Even if you coordinated it, you would still likely not be able to do this very easily.

I think you could also eliminate the more unlikely combinations (consecutive numbers, etc) and probably eliminate a few million picks. You could also look at likely combinations based on pick history. I think there's actually people who put a lot of time in to trying to figure it out. I'm thinking if you did this and played regularly you'd probably hit the smaller payouts once in a while. Not sure if you'd come out ahead, though. There must be a reason more people don't do it. Maybe because if you hit, but so do one or two other people you'd lose out big.

And the Lotteries don't want guaranteed winners.

It would be simple enough to sell you EVERY combination but the fear is that the regular player would stop playing if an investor could win a share everythime. If you're bored one day, call your state's lottery and ask how you buy every combination.

Saw a documentary many years ago where a specialized "mutual fund" was able to by 75%-80% of the tickets by running all over the place once the jackpot was big enough - yes, they were able to buy the winning ticket plus a lot of the smaller combos.

She collected on Thursday.

She pocketed about $6K from the $10K ticket.

She told me she gave $500 to each of her 4 grandchildren and $1K each to both of her children and put the rest in the bank for a rainy day.

That's awesome that a nice old lady won.

It used to be legal in England for "companies" to collect investors into the state lotto. They'd get enough people on board and they could buy enough tickets to pretty much guarantee that they'd win something almost every time. Then they would split the winnings with the investors. This practice got so big and so successful that it was eventually outlawed.

Don't steal, the State hates competition.