Northstar Cash

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Northstar Cash is an exclusive lottery for the state of Minnesota, operated by the Minnesota State Lottery. It is currently the newest lotto game with an all-cash jackpot exclusive to the state, having been established as of October 7th, 2003.[1]

[edit] Playing the game

To play the game, a player pays one dollar and picks five distinct numbers from 1 to 31. The player wins according to the following:

Official Logo
Official Logo
Matches Payoff Odds of winning
2 of 5 numbers $ 1 1: 7
3 of 5 numbers $ 5 1: 52
4 of 5 numbers $ 50 1: 1,307
5 of 5 numbers Jackpot 1: 169,911


Overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 6. The jackpot is paid in cash and will be divided equally if there is more than one winner. The minimum jackpot amount for a drawing is $25,000.

Tickets must be purchased before 6:10 p.m. to be eligible for that day's drawing at 6:26 p.m. Drawings are held daily.

[edit] Miscellania

On 2007-02-11, Raymond Snouffer Jr., an airline pilot from Maplewood, Minnesota, won Northstar Cash for the second time in two days, an occurrence that lottery officials inaccurately described as "virtually incalculable". (The actual probability of this happening is merely the square of the odds of a single day's jackpot win, viz. 1:28,869,747,921.)[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Official Minnesota State Lottery site.
  2. ^ "'Holy buckets!' Lottery winner wins next day, too", Star Tribune, 2007-02-15. Retrieved on 2007-02-19.