Big Lottery Jackpots

It's been quite a while since the Powerball jackpot reached a value above $250 million, but this is exactly what will happen this Wednesday.

Players from all over those 42 states that participate in this lottery, rushed to local shops to buy tickets or did the shopping online, but their effort was in vain. The lucky numbers were 3, 15, 27, 58, and 59 with the Powerball being 20, a sequence that evaded everybody so the jackpot was once again rolled over. In this context, it is expected for the Wednesday draw to attract even more players and it wouldn't be far-fetched to expect the price to grow by another $40 million.

The record for the highest amount ever won in the Powerball stands at $365 million, so assuming that nobody wins, it will take at least a month until it will be shattered. Although the odds of winning the jackpot are stacked against players, with people from all over the nation joining the lottery frenzy, it is hard to believe that the record will be broken again. Suddenly, second-tier prizes are equally important as even those who indicate only the five numbers without the Powerball will cash in on a small fortune.

On Saturday, five players were rewarded with $1 million for a similar performance and one lucky ticket holder received 2 million for the same achievement. The reason why he won twice as much as the others are that he was not cheap and chose to pay the additional dollar that would qualify him for the power-play function. In a nutshell, those who agree to pay the other dollar to activate the feature will have all of their prizes significantly boosted except of course for the jackpot.

Online games are all about convenience and one would expect that by making the transition from land-based casinos to online ones, everything would be better. When it comes to Keno this is generally true, but there is one disadvantage of playing the game over the Internet and this has to do with the fact that multiple tickets can't be played simultaneously. It is something that doesn't happen in brick and mortar casinos, but there are still exceptions to the rule as some virtual rooms allow this type of gaming.

In most cases though, the online casinos use a single matrix of 80 numbers and players mark the ones they prefer so that the called numbers are inscribed on the same matrix later. Some casinos are ready to make amends, by removing this limitation and allowing users to play multiple tickets with as many as seven at the same time. The game mechanics are the same, but the technology powering these types of keno is slightly changed to make this new set of rules functional. For starters, players will have a hard time seeing the numbers on each ticket, due to the fact that they are so small that become barely visible.

The innovation resides in the fact that the online casino allows players to click on the first ticket to enlarge it and to manually mark the called numbers. The same procedure is repeated over and over again for the next tickets, but the procedure takes less time than one might think. Both the tickets and the numbers are clearly displayed in the bottom matrix so that players can enjoy the best of both worlds. At the end of the game, the potential profits are displayed on each ticket so the players can cash them in.