One day he said, “I’ll show you how to play.” He went to a convenience store in Portsmouth and bought three tickets. He selected the numbers for two of the tickets and used Easy Pick for the third.

That night, he returned to the store and discovered he had won $100,000.

Tucker matched all five numbers in the January 23 Cash 5 day drawing. The winning numbers were 7-13-16-19-34. The winning ticket was the one for which he used Easy Pick and allowed the computer to randomly select his numbers.

As he claimed his prize, Tucker said that he shared the good news with his wife and mother.

“I don’t keep good things a secret,” he said.

This is why they are very popular in lotteries because they give people a chance to win big more often. If you join a syndicate with 50 people in it and each has 2 lines then you have 100 lines for every draw which means that you are 50 times more likely to win something. However this works in reverse as well of course because if you win say $1 million then that figure has to be divided by 50 and so $20,000 no longer equals a life changing sum of money.

There are risks to syndicates and the main one is trust. Can you trust all of the people to pay up on time and can you trust the person who is leading the syndicate with the money? These are questions that need to be asked and answered because we have all heard stories of people who have been caught with their proverbial hand in the till so to speak. If you can overcome the trust factor then they are a good idea in my opinion.

This type of strategy and thinking is what strategists call “contrarian” thinking. I believe that this can be applied to gambling games like the lottery for example although in no way can you ever become +EV in this form of gambling . The overwhelming number of people choose numbers lower than 31 simply because they choose birthdays. This means that should you be lucky enough to get five numbers or six numbers or five and the bonus ball that your average pay out will be less.

It would be terrible to get six numbers for what could be a life changing sum of money to find out that you are having to share it will around a hundred other people. So you are far better off simply finding strategies and tactics that are not in common usage and this applies to any form of gambling and even to business. The lessons are clear because if you do what the masses do then you are likely to suffer like the masses do. The key is to be a contrarian thinker.

That’s an estimate. By Feb. 8, the jackpot might be a bit higher.

Good luck everyone.

I know my lottery pool will be playing.

I think his story is a cautionary tale: that is, if you win big, get a trusted financial advisor.

You know me. I ALWAYS try to go positive. But sometimes you have to talk about people who give the finger (so to speak) to their good fortune, instead of being grateful.

Here is the basic story line:

One of Scotland’s first big money lottery winners saids he was broke yesterday as he admitted being a drunk driver. Robert Moffat, 51, was 5.3 times the drink limit at the wheel of his father’s X-type Jaguar when he crashed into a pavement bollard.

The former barman won £800,000 as his share of his family syndicate’s £3.5million jackpot win in 1999. That’s a lot of money. But he has now lost all the trappings of wealth, including his home and classic cars with personal registration plates, Falkirk Sheriff Court was told

Moffat, from Denny, Stirlingshire, admitted driving with a count of 186 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The limit is 35.

Mark Keane, prosecuting, said a passer-by phoned the police at 5pm on December 30 last year after seeing a crashed car in Northfield Road, Denny. “The witness was of the opinion that the driver was under the influence of alcohol and he reported the matter to police.”

Moffat was traced and taken to a police station where he admitted he had been at the wheel of his father’s car and said: “Sorry.”

Dick Sandeman, defending, said: “Moffat has had a particularly hard time over the past year or so.He lost everything he had in his business and his wife and he split up. He has a drink difficulty.”

Adding that the lottery winner was now unemployed and on Jobseekers Allowance, he offered to pay any financial penalty at £10 a week. But Sheriff Vinit Khurana deferred sentence for three weeks for background reports, in view of the high alcohol reading. He disqualified Moffat from driving pending the sentence.

Moffat’s life was made a misery in the wake of his lottery win when a former girlfriend claimed he was the father of her son. But the case was thrown out when DNA tests proved Moffat could not be the boy’s dad.

Yesterday’s court appearance was not his first on a drink-driving charge. In 1998, he admitted being behind the wheel of a car while over the limit and was banned from driving for a year.

A truly said story, isn’t it?

Life can be a challenge, as we all know. And balancing a budget on a small, fixed income in never easy–as Sue Hockenbury of Washington, Illinois can attest.

Hockenbury, 66, has been living on modest, monthly social security benefits over the last two years. Thankfully, she has four children living in the area who freely contribute to their mom’s income when unexpected expenses arise.

Now, thanks to winning a $500 A Week for Life Lottery prize, Hockenbury will be in a position to return the favor to her loving and supportive children and their families.

“The good Lord has been looking after me for many years—and still is,” said Hockenbury, who retired two years ago. An occasional Lottery player, Hockenbury said the most she ever won prior to the “Cash For Life” prize was $10. “I’m still having a hard time believing I won a prize like this,” she said. She is the third Peoria-area resident to date to claim a top prize in one of the Lottery’s “Cash For Life” instant games.

Hockenbury bought her winning ticket the Friday before New Year’s Eve. She wasn’t planning to buy a Lottery ticket. But, after finding a $1 bill in her pocket, she pointed to the $1 Cash For Life ticket and said, “give me one of those.”  It turned out to be one of the best decisions of her life.

After returning home she sat down with a cup of re-warmed coffee and played the scratch game. “I kept saying to myself, ‘this can’t be right….But it was!” To confirm the win, Hockenbury took a short drive to her daughter Dawn’s home. When she walked in,

Dawn and her husband, Paul, realized something was not quite normal with their mom/mother-in-law. “They kept asking me: are you sick; did you fall down; did you have an accident,” said Hockenbury. “’No,’ I said, ‘I won the Lottery!’”

When asked what she might do to treat herself, Hockenbury says it’s too soon to tell, but a new car may be in her future. “I’m just going to bide my time for now,” she said.

I’ve had varying thoughts about the changes in the game.

I do NOT like the $2 ticket. But I play the game nonetheless.

In talking  to retailers, I’ve found that there has not been a slack off in play…. but I need to look into it more.

On the Powerball site, you can actually see how many winning tickets per tier have been won, by state. I think that the number of overall players may be down.

I want to know what YOU think about the new Powerball. And I’ll pass those comments along to my contact at the group that runs the game.

He said he likes to play Lottery Scratchers games and has even won prizes of $1,000 before.

But he’s never won the big prize, as he did with a “20X” Scratchers ticket he bought on Jan. 23, uncovering the top prize of $100,000.

“I play every day,” Cordsiemon declared. “I took it home and scratched it off. I scratched off the 20 times and set the ticket aside.

“So, I came back to it and I scratched off the prize. I said, ‘Well, I’ve got $100.’ I scratched off the comma, and I kind of went numb. I scratched off the remainder of the ticket, and I realized I won $100,000. Very exciting!”

It’s an experience that runs in the family. Cordsiemon’s son, Ronald Cordsiemon II, called him on Christmas day to ask if the ticket he got in his stocking was really a $50,000 winner. It was.

“It was very exciting to have your son hit something like that,” recalled Cordsiemon. “I was so happy for him; I couldn’t hardly stand it. He was very happy for me.”

He added, laughing, “He said, ‘You just had to outdo me, didn’t you, dad?’”

Cordsiemon and his wife, Jo Ann, have already started spending the windfall.

“We bought a used Corvette this morning,” he explained while claiming the ticket. “We’re going to pay off our debts, and then the family is going to gather up and we’re going to have a big seafood dinner!  Crab legs and shrimp!”

Gareth, who is as a self-employed builder, had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a Lucky Dip ticket after rain disrupted his work, and that spontaneous act has changed his life – and that of his family – forever.

Gareth and Catherine, who live in Mansfield, are now the seventh biggest lottery winners in the country, and the numbers that put them in that position were 02, 10, 22, 27 and 28, as well as the Lucky Stars 06 and 08.

Gareth checked his entry on television the morning after the draw had taken place, and it didn’t take him long to realise that his numbers had landed a big win, so he immediately went to share the good news with his wife.

“He came into the bedroom as white as a sheet, the ticket was shaking in his hand and I knew that something wasn’t right,” Catherine said. “When he tried to explain that he thought we’d won, I thought he was pulling my leg. I was in the middle of straightening my hair and told him I wasn’t very happy with being teased!”

Catherine continued: “He was so convincing that I went to check myself. Even though it was on TV I still didn’t believe that we had all the numbers, so I looked online which showed me the same set of numbers.”

Gareth and Catherine have two sons and they had a weekend full of plans in place when they discovered their massive win, so the couple decided to confirm the win with the lottery operator and continue with their weekend as normal without telling anyone about the EuroMillions jackpot.

“All of this has happened at a crazy fast speed and it is hard to keep up!” Gareth said. “We have our dream home which we built from scratch and it is impossible to think about what we are going to do next yet. We have only told a few people so far so it will be exciting to sit down together as a family and work out plans for the future.”

Gareth has already decided to start watching Manchester United play from a private box, and he also intends to buy himself a Range Rover Sport. Other plans include taking a family trip to Disney World in Florida.

The 70-year-old father-of-two said, “I used to think that nobody wins the top prizes, but now I know people do win.”

Donald was with his 38-year-old daughter when the two of them stopped to buy several Lottery tickets for his wife.

“She likes scratch-offs,” said Donald. It wasn’t until the next evening that they got around to playing their tickets.

He, his wife and daughter, were scratching the tickets, winning a few smaller amounts along the way, when Donald struck it rich, winning $50,000 all taxes paid on the new Tax Free scratch-off.

“I asked my daughter what this meant,” he said.  “Looks like you win,” she replied. The trio couldn’t quite believe their good fortune, but as Donald decreed, “It turned out true.”  Donald’s wife quickly phoned her sisters in Pennsylvania and posted the good news on Facebook. “We started getting phone calls congratulating us,” said the happy winner.

The retired Montgomery County, Maryland police officer and now part-time bailiff for the district court intends to use the majority of his winnings to purchase a certificate of deposit for his wife. “It will be security for her,” he said. They will also enjoy a celebratory dinner out.