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CALI LOTTERY - The allure of the lottery is undeniable. Every week, tens of millions of people around the globe purchase tickets, dreaming of getting their hands on a life-changing windfall. The idea that one lucky draw on a ticket that cost nothing more than loose change could totally erase financial worries keeps people coming back to the lottery time and time again.
Aside from the dreams of financial security, there is of course the endless daydreaming that purchasing a lottery ticket entitles you to. The dreams of huge mansions, sprawling yachts, and endless round-the-world vacations.
It’s those two things in combination, the promise of financial security and the dream of luxurious wealth, that keep people buying tickets, despite the odds being not so favorable.
The Reality of Lottery Odds
The average person doesn’t ever put too much thought into the odds behind the lottery. Some may believe they have terrible lottery odds, on the other hand, so many think it’s not even worth contemplating. But just exactly how long are your odds of buying a winning ticket? Ultimately it varies from game to game, depending on the amount of numbers in play. The odds of winning the Powerball and Mega Millions, for example there, are 1 in 292 million and 1 in 302 million.
To put that into perspective, here are some things that are statistically more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery:
- Being hit by a bus (1 in 2 million chance)
- Being elected President of the USA (1 in 10 million chance)
- Winning an Olympic Gold (1 in 662,00 chance)
- Being crushed by a meteor (1 in 700,000)
- Dating a millionaire (1 in 215 chance)*
*Looking for a millionaire on a dating app would be a much better use of your time than playing the lottery!
(You have a better chance of making this your residence for the next four years than you do of winning the lottery.)
California’s Biggest Lottery Wins
Now that we’ve effectively crushed your spirits and dissuaded you from ever purchasing a lottery ticket again allow us to undo all of that and enthuse you! Below are some of the biggest lottery wins in Californian history to get you daydreaming again…
Edwin Castro - $2.04 Billion Powerball Jackpot
In 2022, California resident Edwin Castro won the largest lottery prize in American history. Thanks to the unique and bizarre way that our tax system operates, however, Castro only ended with a lump sum payout of $997.6 million after taxes, so he isn’t quite a billionaire.
That said, $997.6 million is still an absolutely huge amount of money. Earlier this year, however, bad luck struck Castro when one of his three multi-million pound mansions in Los Angeles burnt down during the wildfires.
Some, including Jose Rivera, would say that the fire was a divine intervention from God as rumors still abound that Castro stole the winning lottery ticket from Rivera…
(Scandal has followed the Powerball winner.)
Group Sweepstake - $1.765 Billion Powerball Jackpot
Just one year on from Edwin Castro’s huge pay out, there was another massive winner in California, this time for a sweepstake group. The group who was represented in the media by Theodorus Struyck has remained largely anonymous since the big win, which, in our minds, is an incredibly savvy thing to do!
Anonymous - $1.22 Billion Mega Millions Jackpot
California it seems has a habit of throwing up lottery winners and threw up another toward the end of last year. At the time of writing the name of the lucky winner has yet to be published, but the winning ticket was purchased just before Christmas in Cottonwood, about two hours north of Sacramento.
Why do People Keep Playing?
If you only read the first half of this article you would find that a hard question to answer. With the odds-on offer, the chances of winning the lottery are negligible to almost make it a pointless endeavor.
Reading on, though, you will undoubtedly have felt a flicker of excitement and escapism when you saw the staggering amounts won by Californians—not just millions or tens of millions, but hundreds and hundreds of millions after tax.
Remote as it may be that you could simply buy a ticket and win the same amount of cash, it is still a possibility and an utterly irresistible one at that. Whilst the chances of becoming President of the USA or winning an Olympic Gold medal are much, much better than your chances of winning the lottery, they require effort.
To win the lottery all you have to do is buy a ticket and cross your fingers, and it’s that ease that makes playing the lottery so easy and so hard to resist.
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