chances are

Thousands of people are lining up in front of gas stations to purchase their powerball tickets. The prize has risen to $340 million and many people are itching to get their hands on that mountain of cash. Many pick their own personal lucky numbers, such as family member's birthdays, to increase their chance of winning. The news has publicized this as one of the biggest lotteries around and many are sure that this is the big one. Everyone wants to win the big one. Whenever people look through their junk mail, they believe that they will be standing in their pjs on the front porch watching publishers clearing house hand over a big oversized check. Most people expect to win prizes.

Everyone has been to one of those pizza places when they were little. They were all the same basic concept: crappy pizza, crappy pitchers of rootbeer, crappy animatronic beavers moving and singing to whatever was on the radio and tons of video games to siphon more money out of your parent's wallet. Those places made bank on little kids with the prizes they gave out from games that rewarded the player with tickets. skee-ball and other games give tickets to redeem for awesome prizes ranging from little candies and plastic jewelry to the am/fm clock radio and the coveted 13 inch color television. Of course the TV cost like 15000 tickets and there was no possible way to get that many tickets. Ever. No matter how bad you cheated and ran up the skee-ball ramp to put balls in the middle hole, there was no possible way to earn 15000 tickets for the TV or the radio. I'm sure if kids could add it up it would be cheaper to go out and by the crappy TV than spend 15000 tickets worth of quarters. Leaving the place with nothing but a finger trap and a half eaten pizza was nothing compared to the kid who saved enough tickets to buy the dust covered 13 inch television.

odds of winning are 1 in a billion.