The truth about giant lottery jackpot rollovers: should you play or avoid them?
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Don't be like these 48 Pennsylvania Powerball winners who shared the $107 million jackpot, only getting $2.2 million each.
Everyone gets excited when a major game like the Mega Millions, Powerball, UK National Lottery or Canada's Lotto Max starts heading into the multi-million territory.
As the jackpot rolls over each week - sometimes for a month or more at a time - the huge prize figure becomes irresistible to many players.
They spend more, play more, hope more.
Should you join them? Here's the Pro's and Con's of getting into these games:
Pro's:
The jackpot amount is bigger and more appealing. Your life will certainly change for the better.
It's easy to get excited about the large prizes.
Con's:
More people play in a large jackpot game, making the chance of sharing the jackpot much higher. A 100 million prize divided among 10 players is not as good as winning a smaller jackpot prize of 50 million all by yourself. The Pennsylvania winners above are a good example of that.
You might be tempted to spend more on tickets than you can afford. Always stick to your budget.
You might divert your investment from your regular game to the big game. This is not a good strategy. One of the Silver Lotto System rules is to play one game and stick to it.
The odds are worse in high jackpot games because they are usually long odds... they use large numbers of balls and numbers, and usually have a bonus ball. This makes the game harder to win. You always get better odds with smaller numbers.
My recommendation?
Play the big jackpots if you want. But don't overspend. Remember your competition from other players is higher, so the chance of sharing is increased. And the number of balls and numbers are higher, further reducing your chances.
The best games are still the simplest... low ball numbers (5 is good), low numbers (less than 45) and no extra bonus balls. You might score a win like this Canadian player:
