All About Lottery Pools
Lottery pools or syndicates, as they are known in Europe, allow you to significantly increase your chances of becoming a lottery winner. And the best part is you don't have to spend any more money. Pooling represents your best lottery strategy if winning a share of the jackpot for millions or tens of millions would make you happy. Lottery pool success stories are numerous.
What is a Lottery Pool? – It’s either a pool of tickets contributed by a group of players, or it’s a pool of money, contributed by the players, which in turn is used to purchase a block of tickets. In both cases, the tickets are shared among the players.
Pros and Cons of Lottery Pools - The benefit to each player is that they get to play with more tickets than if they played on their own, maximizing their odds of winning. The drawback is that they only get a share of the winnings rather than all of the winnings.
Joining or Starting a Lottery Pool? – Joining a lottery pool is much easier than starting a lottery pool assuming that the existing pool has a set of lottery pool rules and infrastructure already in place. Additionally, finding other players who want to pool when you want to pool and in the same game and agreeing on the lottery rules can be a logistical and legal nightmare. There are many articles online about starting a lottery pool, which include a list of considerations to include in a lottery pool agreement. We can't understate the importance of have an agreement in order to properly manage the pool. For example:
- Are commercial lottery pools allowed in your state?
- Does your workplace allow lottery pools?
- Who is in charge?
- Are their rules for contributing funds, for example cut off times?
- Who holds on to the tickets?
- Who brings the tickets into the store to check for winners and collect winnings?
- Is there a written agreement each person signs?
- Does each person receive a copy of the tickets?
- How are the results reported to each person?
- Is the person buying the tickets separating personal tickets from pool tickets?
In general, those pools which are offered online are known as “Public Lottery Pools” meaning that they consist of players who do not know each other. Non-Public Pools, also known as “Private Lottery Pools” can also be found online, but are mostly offline and are found in work places or offices, known as “Office Pools”.
Finding Lottery Pools Online – Federal statutes require that lottery tickets cannot be sold across state lines, so when searching, enter your state indicator. Thus, in Arizona, where PowerPick is located, you can search for “AZ lottery pools” or “Arizona lottery pools”. You might also search for “AZ powerball lottery pools” or “AZ mega millions lottery pools.”
Trusted Lottery Pool Sites – There are several indicators that you can look at in deciding whether or not to trust putting your money into a public lottery pool. For example, longevity – how many years they have been in service? do they have a public office where you can meet those running the pool? do they offer a support telephone number so you can talk to a live person? and what rating do they have with the Better Business Bureau?
Lottery Pool Benefits and Services – Questions to ask are: What games are offered? And What pool sizes are offered? For example, with PowerPick’s EZPooling website, players can choose from group sizes 10, 20, 25, 50 100, and 200. And they can choose pools in Powerball, Powerball with the Power Play option, Mega Millions, Mega Millions with the Megaplier option, The Pick and Fantasy 5. Other services and benefits can be found in our Pooling Benefits & More page.
