Those days of buying a Powerball or Florida Lotto ticket, then waiting for Wednesday or Saturday night for the results, are dying.
For low-stakes gamblers who crave daily action, there has always been Cash 3 and Play 4. Both games cost $1, provide results daily and pay out $500 for Cash 3 and $5,000 for Play 4. Not life-changing money, but certainly worth celebrating.
I learned of their unique popularity in poorer neighborhoods while researching a major package I did at the Sun-Sentinel on frequent players and frequent winners. Cash 3 and Play 4 players buy their tickets daily because, God forbid, that 4-5-6 combo comes in on a day they didn’t bet them. And when you live paycheck to paycheck, that $365 a year (or more) you’re gambling has a more realistic chance of paying out that Florida Lotto or Powerball.
The Cash 3 and Play 4 players, in my opinion, were among those most taken advantage of in the Florida Lottery. They’re not the “dollar-and-a-dream” affluent folks putting down money on Powerball for the enjoyment of dreaming of untold riches — although Powerball and Florida Lotto also pay out only 50 percent of ticket sales. (By the way, horse tracks pay out about 80 percent, casino slots 92 percent.)
So what does the Florida lottery do? Well, in 2008, they added a “mid-day draw,” meaning that players could buy tickets for a 1:30 p.m. daily drawing, as well as the traditional 7:57 p.m. one. Kind of like when the shampoo manufacturers added “repeat” to the directions, and usage increased. That $365 annual bet grew to $730.
And now they are adding two more daily draw games, with equally putrid payouts.
Starting Monday, you can play Pick 2, Pick 5 and our old favorites, but newly renamed Pick 3 and Pick 4.
Pick 2 pays $50 (think about it, if you took every possible two-number combination of 0 through 9, that’s 100 numbers) and Pick 5 will pay $50,000 (on odds of one in 100,000). Yes, both will be offered twice daily.
Like state lotteries everywhere, Florida gets about three-fourths of its revenue from 10 percent of the state population – the heavy players – says Les Bernal of Stop Predatory Gambling, which calls for an end to lotteries.
“They can talk all they want about how much they care about citizens, but state lotteries are the poster child for the rising unfairness and inequality in our country,” he says.
He says lotteries specialize in “extracting whatever discretionary money some people have, getting them to play games designed to get them to lose,” and states should instead encourage citizens to build their assets.
Experts correctly note that true gambling addicts play scratch-off lottery games, because there’s nothing more instantly gratifying than buying that ticket with your pack of cigs and standing outside and scratching off to see if you’ve won. But scratch-offs return 70 cents on each dollar invested, so it’s a little less of a sucker’s bet.
The lottery will still continue another daily draw game, Fantasy 5. Players choose five numbers, ranging from one through 36. The payout is usually over $200,000 if you’re the sole person to choose the five numbers drawn.
Florida Lotto, Powerball, Cash 3, Play 4 and Fantasy 5 each account about 6 percent of Florida’s $5 billion in lottery sales. Scratch-offs comprise about 70 percent, and growing.
