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MARY: I'm Mary Neubauer with the Iowa Lottery. It's time for us to answer another
player mail question. This one seems to come from a mistaken belief folks
have, no matter where they live. I'd categorize what we're talking about as an
urban myth. Wiktionary defines an urban myth this way: A widely circulated
story, often believed to be true by the teller but usually distorted, exaggerated
or fabricated for sensational effect and often having elements of humor or horror.
The urban myth we've been told is that no one from here ever wins.
Well one day, we were talking with folks at the D.C. Lottery in Washington and we
were telling them about the statement we'll sometimes here that no one from
Iowa ever wins.
They started laughing because what they hear from folks in their area
is that it's always those people from Iowa who win.
We came to the conclusion that people will never truly be satisfied unless
they're the ones who win the jackpot. In reality, people can and do win lottery
prizes every day, including really big prizes!
Did you know that in the past three years, since January 2010,
22 winners in Iowa have claimed prizes of at least one million dollars.
That includes five winners of a million dollars just so far this year alone.
Iowa Lottery players have won six jackpots so far in Powerball and
nine jackpots to date in Hot Lotto. The biggest lottery prize won in Iowa so far was a
Powerball jackpot of $200.8 million dollars. That big prize was
claimed by Tim and Kellie Guderian of Fort Dodge in October of 2006.
The bottom line is, big winners happen all over the state at various retail locations.
And every ticket in one of our games has the same odds of winning.
But highter ticket sales do you mean more winners. It's quite possible that certain
locations sell several times as many tickets as others, creating more winners
and the perception that more winners come out of those locations, but the odds
are the same for everyone.
So the next time you will hear someone say that no one from here ever wins
maybe these numbers can help you give them the real 411.
If you've got a question you'd like us to answer, contact us at the lottery's
webmaster account.
We'll answer more player mail in the weeks ahead.