QUICK RIDDLE: What has six balls and screws you
three-times-a-week? ANSWER: Lotto.
If you go out and buy yourself a lottery ticket today, the odds are literally millions-to-one against you hitting the jackpot. However, if you placed a bet that the company running your state lottery is shadowy, your odds would be a lot better. California, New York, and New Jersey, among other states, had the fog of scandal hanging over their lottery operations, and there was even a Federal Grand Jury in Texas probing the activities of one lottery company.
Lottery operators are a cunning lot. Not content with profits from the New York daily numbers drawings and the dozen or more scratch-off "games" for sale everywhere, the lottery crowd in Albany schemed up a neat way to circumvent New York's long-standing legal prohibition against casino gambling games. Keno, a casino mainstay in both New Jersey and Nevada casinos, was finessed into New York State under the alias of Quick-Draw.
Quick-Draw is a video numbers game that is flashed on television screens in many New York bars and delis. A new game runs every five minutes.
Keno and Quick-Draw are identical in concept, except that Quick-Draw has fewer numbers and smaller payoffs and, as bad a some airports, which allows lobby cigar stand operators to make a living. On my way up to see a publisher, I impulsively stopped at a lobby stand and bought a $1 lottery ticket. I scratched it off in the elevator and was delighted to find I had a $25 winner. On my way out I happily cashed my winning ticket. What the proprietor said as he counted out the $25 cured me forever from buying anymore scratch-off lottery tickets.
"Jeez, yer one lucky guy. In a year an' a haff I mustda sold a cou-pla hunnerd thou' tickets, and yer da' foist $25 winner I ever seen."
There are flukes, of course, as lightning must strike somewhere. Once, Lyle Stuart took some employees and kin out for lunch. Impulsively, he stopped off and bought a $1 lottery for each of his guests, putting a ticket at each place setting. His daughter Sandy learned two nights later that she had a $5,000 winner.
To sum it all up, my advice to you is to avoid the state lotteries in all their razzle-dazzle shapes and forms. They're all rip-offs. You can't win, you won't win,- don't waste your money. If you think playing your "lucky numbers" will be the key to a life of wealth and ease, think again. Most of the pitifully few winners of New York State Weekly Lotto jackpots have won by the dumb-luck "Quick-Pick" ticket, where the Lotto computer selects your numbers.
The New York Daily News reported that there were five winners of the $40 million jackpot of February 26, 1998. The headline of this story: "A Quick-Pick Trip to Wealth."
All five of the winners did it with Quick-Pick tickets!
Outside of the Quick-Pick method, the only way I can suggest for you to pick a winner is to buy a monkey. A man in California had his pet monkey pick out numbered ping-pong balls from a cardboard box. You guessed it, pal. The monkey unerringly picked out the wining lottery numbers, guaranteeing his owner a life of ease and for himself a lifetime supply of bananas.
If you don't happen to own a pet monkey, then the next wisest thing is just not to buy any rip-off state lottery tickets.
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