The amount at stake -- $100 million -- is staggering. So are the odds: 23 million to one. But that hasn't deterred legions of optimistic lottery players from snatching up tickets at the rate of 18,000 a minute.
And with the bloated jackpot for Saturday night's drawing -- the state's second highest ever -- serious players are looking for any edge to blunt the crushing odds, and they're trying a variety of methods to do it.
"I'm not going to win, but I can't take the chance," said Mike Scheppa of Davie, who's in a Lotto pool with his workmates. "If all the guys win, I'll be upset -- they get to leave and I can't."
When no one picked six of 53 numbers to win the jackpot Wednesday night, the amount rolled over to $100 million. That's just a few million shy of the biggest jackpot, $106 million in 1990, since the Florida lottery started in April 1988.
Lottery officials expect the frenzy to build over the next two days. "We think that we will exceed 60,000 tickets per minute statewide during our peak hours of 5 to 8 p.m." Saturday, said Lotto spokesman Sam Oliver. Traditionally, Oliver said, jackpots aren't increased between a Wednesday and Saturday drawing, but it all depends on sales.
Joining a pool is one way to reduce the odds, experts say, as if shaving a few percentage points off a 23 million spread will help. But players gambling on a 24-carat Christmas are keen to acquire any edge they can, however slight.
"There are a lot of people who are into this," said L.S. Love of Naples, publisher since 1986 of Lotto Edge Magazine. "You study the charts and the history of the lottery just as you would if you went to the racetrack."
With a pool, Love said, potential multimillionaires have more chances and more opportunities to do some creative Lotto playing. One problem: You have to share. The larger the pool, the better the chance, but the smaller each player's cut.
In what the experts call "wheeling," a player using a special math formula selects certain numbers and covers each combination of those numbers. For example, one could choose 18 numbers in 42 combinations and buy a ticket for each combination. That would cost a total of $42, but increase the odds of winning four out of six numbers, and possibly, the big jackpot.
"I have several customers that wheel the numbers," said Roni Frye, owner of MacCarthy's Fruit Shippers, a downtown Fort Lauderdale newsstand. "They hit a few times. I had one that got five numbers on five tickets."
Then there are the players who buy bulk lot tickets, such as the fellow from Detroit who orders up 1,000 at once from Frye when there is an especially big payoff. Such investments aren't that surefire, Love said. More tickets just give you that many more 23 million-to-one shots.
One bit of advice Love gives is to pick six numbers that add up to about 163. That's the average total of all the winning numbers during the Lotto's 14-year life span. Love said players who pick numbers totaling anywhere from 140 to 180 have a better chance of winning.
But just because that's been a winning trend in the past, how can one guarantee it will continue?
"There's no such thing as perfect randomness," Love said, citing patterns in statistical trends. "What you have are short-term streaks that you try to follow."
Love has yet to catch that hot streak, never having won a jackpot. But "I have won many prizes over the years," he said.
Because their numbers don't always add up to that magic range, Love said, Quick Pick tickets aren't a good bet. "Quick Picks, I believe, are one of the worst things you could buy because they're so out of balance," he said.
But when it comes to the lottery's random drawings, no one can predict with certainty.
Lotto spokesman Oliver said Quick Picks make up about 50 percent of overall winning tickets, and have been quite lucky recently. "Over the last six months the bulk of our jackpot winners have been Quick Picks," he said.
Pools, Oliver said, don't always mean a better chance at raking in the big bucks. "It's a small amount" Oliver said of the percentage of players who win with pools. "The bulk of our winners, I'd say 80 percent, are individual winners."
Oliver said winners have picked lucky numbers out of a shoebox. Some use birthdays, anniversaries or other personal dates. Love said that's fine, but don't expect much. "I believe that people should play a couple of dollars worth of personal numbers just so they can have a connection to the game," he said. "It's not a scientific approach at all."
Randy Weinstein of Delray Beach takes a philosophical approach: Ignore the astronomical odds and just play. "It's a gamble like anything, even if the odds aren't in your favor," he said, clutching a pink and white ticket. "For a few bucks you can take a chance."
Robert Nolin can be reached at rnolin@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2024.
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