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.

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?

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.

Marcia Adams, 33, matched all of the winning numbers in the Jan. 24 Mega Millions drawing.

Adams claimed her $72 million prize Thursday at Georgia Lottery headquarters. After final sales were tallied, the jackpot increased from the advertised $71 million. Adams selected the cash option amount, which is $52 million.

Her boyfriend, Kenneth, was craving a Hershey’s with almonds chocolate bar on the night of the drawing; but at her urging, he purchased two Quik Piks instead.

“We found out this morning while he was taking me to work,” said Adams, who works in accounting. “I almost lost my mind.”

The couple were talking about the ticket when Kenneth checked the results of the drawing on the Georgia Lottery’s mobile site with his cell phone.

“We’ve been laughing since then,” she said. “We feel like we’re dreaming, like this isn’t real.”

Adams has worked in accounting 12 years; and at the moment, she plans to continue working. She and Kenneth have dated seven years.

“We’re going to plan for our wedding and buy a house,” she said. “We just want to be happy.”

“I always buy a ticket,” said Sandy. “I didn’t think much about it. When I went to work on Monday, somebody said, ‘Someone in Itasca County won Hot Lotto!’ I had to work late and when I got home, Don said, ‘Get on the computer [to check the winning numbers.]’ I printed off the numbers and checked.”

She saw that all six numbers on the first line of her five-line quick-pick ticket matched the winning numbers and told Don.

“I jumped up and ran out there and looked. I just couldn’t believe it,” he said.

Don is retired, but Sandy had to go to work at the Grand Rapids Herald-Review newspaper the next morning to ask for a day off to claim the prize.

The cash option is worth $1.98 million before required tax withholding.

The winning Hot Lotto numbers on Jan. 14, 2012 are 1-4-9-17-21 and the Hot Ball was 10.

That’s the “problem” (if you want to call it that) Kenneth Halvorsen had after he discovered he’d won the top prize in the Virginia Lottery’s World Poker Tour® game.

The Harrisonburg, Virginia man told Lottery officials he scratched the ticket while he was still in the store.

When he realized it was no ordinary ticket, he quietly left the store. While driving home, he tried to plan how to tell his wife in a funny way. However, when he got home, he just came out with it.

Halvorsen said he plans to pay bills with his prize and save for his son’s college education.

Janene and Garry Thompson of Portland, Oregon, winners of  $36,000, playing Lucky Lines℠ are two timers.

Lucky them.

They recently became the first two-time jackpot winners in the daily draw game.

“Nice to be back,” said Janene and Garry when they picked up their prize at lottery headquarters. When the couple decided to equally share the prize, they were each presented with a prize of $18,000.

In 2008, Janene had been in to claim a $21,000 jackpot prize. That’s a total of $57,000 in jackpot prizes alone. The couple said they enjoy playing Lucky Lines, and often win prizes from $2 to $25 to keep the fun and excitement going.

Does anyone doubt that they’ll be back for a third time? Someday.