Daily Millions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daily Millions was a US lottery game administered by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). It was available in some of the jurisdictions that sell MUSL's most popular game, Powerball. It began in September 1996 and was discontinued in March 1998. The game was drawn seven nights per week.

Players paid US$1 for each game, which consisted of six numbers. Two numbers each were drawn from three number fields, each numbered from 01 through 21. The balls were painted red, white, and blue respectively; the same order as the United States flag. Players won by matching at least two of the six numbers, regardless of which color drum(s) the matching balls came from. Matching all six won $1 million, which was cash, rather than annuitized.

The name "Daily Millions" was chosen since MUSL believed the game would be popular enough for the association to award, on average, at least one $1 million prize per drawing. Top prize winners, however, were very hard to come by. The game developed the nickname "Daily Miracle", perhaps because it was surviving as long as it did.

Daily Millions has been replaced with three different games, each succeeding the previous one. The current MUSL offering is Hot Lotto, which began in April 2002. Later that spring, Kansas and Nebraska started 2by2, which is played much like Daily Millions was, except players choose from only two sets of numbers (red and white; the same colors as in Powerball.) The top prize is $20,000; it does not roll over when there is no ticket matching all four numbers. North Dakota became 2by2's third state in 2004.