Mass. lottery hopefuls dying while waiting for drawing

[The Buzz]

So Buzzy lives in Mass., but doesn't play the lottery. He does know, however, that there are $10 Hold'em lottery tickets available and some people win a chance at a $10 million prize with their tickets.

Thing is that those finalists have to wait until all 80.6 million tickets are sold before the final drawing will be held. Some of those finalists are dying before the drawing is held.

Some players, already kept waiting more than two years, have given up hope of even getting a shot at winning the $10 million grand prize. Lottery officials are waiting until all 80.6 million tickets are sold to conduct the big drawing, but acknowledged that a few of the hundreds of finalists have died waiting.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i...VYK_oQDlL1uXdA

That's worse than waiting for the inside straight to hit on the river.

[universal4]

Is that correct? 80 million tickets?

So they wait until almost a billion is collected before a 10 million payout?

That is crazy. I figure they would make much more with sooner payouts.

Rick
Universal4

[matted]

Not to mention almost half the $10 million prize gets paid back to the government in taxes.

Can you even halfway imagine a government licensing a casino with 1% payoff? And then telling the player to give half that 1% back?! On average, lottery games pay back 35-50% - then take out taxes.

[The Buzz]

There are other prizes, it's not just a whopping jackpot, so it's not like they're only paying out 10 percent of what's put in.

In fact, if you look on craigs list in Boston, you'll see about a dozen WPT poker tables and sets of poker chips people are trying to unload after they won them from these lottery tickets.