Powerball prize just a myth? At least it seems like a great big one to me!

As I write this, I’m preparing to pick up my parents from the airport (Midway) as they return from a weekend trip to the casinos of Las Vegas, Nev.

My loser ticket. I don't feel need for another

At that time, I’ll be able to tell them they lost again – at Powerball. Although I’m sure they already realize they’re not big winners, they didn’t win that drawing last week.

THE ONE THAT could have paid out about $800 million!

Which results in the prize rolling over, and some estimates saying it could be a $1.4 billion prize to a single winner when the next drawing is held.

Now my interest in this is literally that I’m holding a Powerball ticket from the Saturday drawing that nobody won. In my case, I bought five chances (a $10 bet) and only came up with one matching number.

I bought the ticket for my father, who literally called me from Las Vegas on Saturday to ask me to make the purchase.

MAYBE HE THOUGHT he’d have something big to come home to if his losing streak in Nevada continued throughout the weekend. It seems I placed a crummy bet.

Which is why I have to admit all the enthusiasm and ecstasy that some people feel about gambling is totally lost on me. I don’t get why people are so eager to dump a few bucks of their hard-earned money on tickets.

As I see it, the $800 million promise of last weekend was a myth. Whereas the $10 bill I had in my wallet was real, and all I have to show for it now is a slip of paper laced with some sort of chemical that if I tried to eat my losses, I’d get a rancid taste in my mouth.

Then again, it’s not just lottery tickets that lose me. The whole casino experience leaves me dry – even though the last time I set foot in one, I actually walked out with about $50 more than I walked in there with.

MY THANKS TO the people of the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Ind., for that little financial boost. Although I also have embedded in my mind the sight of a woman who tried three different credit cards in a cash machine and wound up having all of them rejected – because she had bet so much and lost.

Thank goodness for the activist-types who often get derided for ruining people’s fun for saving that woman from losing even more cash that day.

In my own case, part of my lack of enthusiasm for gambling is that I’m cheap. You have to be willing to bet big, and often, in order to boost your chances of winning a significant prize – and I’m just not willing to do that.

Realize that I’m fully aware of the fact that my step-mother (if she ever reads this) will regard such thoughts as heresy. For all I know, I may get disowned from the family. Or at least uninvited to the next family get-together.

AFTER ALL, THE reason she and my father were in Las Vegas this past weekend was a birthday celebration. I won’t find out until Tuesday whether she really had a Happy Birthday!, but I suspect somehow she did.

She really does find a joy in the casino experience that is just lost on me. Or on the gambling experience in general. Somehow, seeing “dream books” piled up by the Illinois Lottery ticket machine at the convenience store in suburban Hazel Crest where I bought last week’s Powerball ticket just seemed sad.

Which is why I won’t be among those getting all giddy at the thought of a Wednesday prize that could make me a billionaire!?! Because all I’d get was another loser because I didn’t buy a dream book to tell me what number I should play because I dreamed of my brother, Chris, and I sitting in the stands at a ballgame.

Maybe if I had, my father would have some winnings to come home to.

  -30-

Lottery a sucker game, regardless of how big the jackpot gets to be

By the time you read this, there’s a very good chance that one (or maybe several) people will have matched the right numbers to claim a Mega Millions prize that will be one of the largest – if not THE largest – ever.

Way too many people paid attention to a ritual similar to this to see if they were suddenly multi-millionaires

 

The drawing was Tuesday night for a prize of $636 million, or perhaps higher if it managed to grow in the final hours between when this commentary was written and when the drawing occurred.

WITH THE LARGEST lottery prize ever being $656 million (nearly two years ago, and split between winners in rural Redbud, along with Kansas and Maryland), this could turn out to be a big deal for somebody.

I would expect the number of players for this week’s drawing will be so many that so many different combinations of numbers will be played on tickets that it will be impossible for no one to manage to win the big prize.

So I’ll issue my premature congratulations to whoever does manage to come up with the winning combination, and will say I hope that having all that money doesn’t manage to screw up their lives by creating complications that us poorer folk can’t even envision.

As for me, I’m not going to have to worry about that. I could use the money. I have debts that need to be paid.

BUT A PART of me never fails to be amazed whenever I go to a gas station and get stuck waiting in a line because somebody ahead of me feels compelled to put down $50 or so in order to buy all kinds of variations of lottery tickets – in hopes of gaining their “fortune” in a single swoop.

Or perhaps that’s single scratch. As in digging out that penny to scratch off the coating that covers up the numbers to reveal whether or not they “won” anything. As though the person who blows half a sawbuck on lottery tickets thinks they’re successful because one of those tickets manages to win a $5 prize!

Maybe it would turn out like those employees of a bakery in suburban Chicago Heights who won a significant lottery prize early this year – only to have all kinds of people try to glom on (or were they wrongly cheated out of a chance to play?) so that it will be years before anybody gets any money remaining after legal fees are paid.

Then again, I’m also the type who just doesn’t get the appeal of the casinos in places like East Chicago, Ind., Joliet or Elgin – to name a few. And even if you think this an elitist thought, I think Chicago can do better than attracting a casino to within its boundaries.

Somebody's prize? Or criminal evidence!

I DON’T HAVE any moralistic qualms about gambling – I’m all for letting people decide what to do with their own money. I just don’t get the appeal of banking it all on a chance to “win” a fortune.

Particularly since when, if you think about it, there really is no difference between the modern-day lottery and the numbers racket of old – except that the only time the latter ever made it into the news was when self-righteous types felt compelled to make some sort of police raid under the guise of protecting the public from the scourge of gambling.

Personally, I have only once played a lottery game – several decades ago, because an editor of mine came up with a unique gag gift for the Christmas holiday. He gave us all “a hope and a prayer,” as in a single lottery ticket AND a plastic, glow-in-the-dark rosary.

I didn’t win anything from that ticket, but I actually still have that rosary (which glows a real sickly shade of green) and consider it a trinket of great significance because of its personal tie to that editor.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN if I had actually won a few bucks from that ticket.

So I haven’t rushed out to claim a share of Mega Millions in some fantasy that I could quit all forms of work and turn this weblog into a rambling account of my globe-trotting activities.

Because I suspect it would turn out to be more likely that I – and many millions of other individuals who likely now are disappointed with their losses – would wind up more like an individual who attended a recent holiday party I attended Sunday.

There was a gift grab bag in which we all contributed an item, then picked a present at random. This person picked nearly $50 worth of instant game tickets.

At least I'll know what day it is

IT WAS ALMOST humorous as she then spent the next 20 or so minutes diligently scratching off her cards to figure out what she won – she wound up winning nothing! They were all losers.

Somehow, I sense the calendar (decorated with photographs by Ansel Adams) I got out of the deal will be more worthwhile.

  -30-