As the Powerball jackpot reached $435 million for Saturday, lottery mania started to kick in as some Georgians lined up for tickets and dreamed of getting rich.
Even though the jackpot for Saturday night’s drawing would be the eighth largest in history, Cathy Latimer wasn’t biting.
“It’s a rip-off,” Latimer said while checking out Saturday afternoon at a Dunwoody convenience store where ticket sales were brisk. “It’s a way of taking your money.”
Latimer should know. She became an avid player not long after the Georgia Lottery was created in 1993 and played all the time. She liked the idea of supporting the HOPE Scholarship, which is funded by lottery revenues.
These days, she said she hardly ever buys a ticket.
“It’s the devil in disguise,” she said. “I do not advise anybody to play the lottery.”
While Georgians are devoted to the game, the odds of winning a big payoff from a Powerball bet (each play costs $2) are astronomically small. The odds for the jackpot: 1 in 292 million.
Here’s how the game works: Players choose five numbers from 1 to 69 and a Powerball number from 1 to 26.
Winning the jackpot requires a perfect match of all six picks.
The next best payoff —$1 million — goes to those who match the first five numbers but miss the Powerball. The odds of that aren’t too good either, at just over 1 in 11 million.
Powerball drawings are held Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10:59 p.m. and can be watched on Channel 2.
Latimer knows all the games the Georgia Lottery offers and she’s not a fan of any of them. Over the years, she said, she has won about $10,000 total. But she said she has probably spent way over $20,000 playing the lottery since it came to Georgia.
She said she wishes Georgia would get rid of the game. “It’s a detriment to a lot of people,” Latimer said.
Powerball jackpots start at $40 million and get larger each week if no player picks the winning combination. Powerball also is available in 43 other states, as well as Washington D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Bob Ferrell stopped by a Dunwoody convenience store Saturday afternoon to invest in a lottery play. He said he spends a few bucks every week on a chance to get rich, joking that it’s his 401(k). If he keeps putting money in, he said with a smile, he hopes to get a giant payoff for retirement.
He usually focuses on the games with better odds than Powerball offers and said his biggest win was $600 from a Georgia Lottery game called Fantasy 5.
While Ferrell plays frequently, he said, he never spends much. He still recalls his father’s advice — don’t ever play with more than you can afford to lose.
But he sees why people are drawn to the games. “It’s that hope,” he said. “I can understand. It’s a fantasy.”
Michael Jones also was playing the Georgia Lottery at a QuikTrip convenience store in Sandy Springs that was selling a lot of tickets Saturday. Jones said he focuses on the games where you pick three of four numbers — he even studies which numbers tend to win more than others.
But even with Saturday’s giant jackpot, Jones said he opted out of Powerball, saying, “I just think the odds are against me.”
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