It sounds easy: Just pick five little numbers. But they have to be the right numbers, of course.
Somebody got it right at a gas station in California. Whether they picked their “favorites” or let the computer pick for them is not known. However they were chosen, all five of the winning numbers were on a California Fantasy 5 ticket for the March 24, 2023 drawing.
We don’t know whether the lucky player filled their gas tank. But the winning ticket will certainly “top off” a bank account with its $342,482 grand prize.
What were the winning numbers?
The lucky digits for the March 24, 2023 Fantasy 5 drawing were 3, 5, 7, 12, and 31. You can check your tickets for any drawing on the Fantasy 5 website.
Who won the jackpot?
This was a very recent drawing. As a result, no winning names have been released as of this writing.
Where was the $342,000 Fantasy Five ticket sold?
The lucky ticket was sold at Chevron, a California gas station. The location is shown in the following map:
Lucky gas stations?
Gas stations seem to be lucky for lottery players recently. I have written about several here on NewsBreak:
Lottery ticket alert: $3 million scratcher sold at this Pennsylvania gas station
Lottery game wins $2 million jackpot prize for customer of North Carolina gas station
Lottery ticket alert - Somebody in New York just won $1 million at this gas station
About California’s Fantasy 5 lottery game
Fantasy 5 is a daily draw game that offers the best odds of any California lottery game. To play, you need to pick five numbers from 1 to 39, or choose Quick Pick to get random numbers. You can also enter up to 12 consecutive draws in advance. Here is more information on how to play Fantasy 5.
The top prize starts between $60,000 and $80,000 and grows until someone wins it by matching all five numbers. The top prize is pari-mutuel, which means it depends on how many tickets are sold and how many winners there are.
Are better odds more important than enormous prizes?
Life, as they say, is full of tradeoffs. California’s popular Fantasy 5 lottery game trades the massive jackpots — sometimes over a billion dollars — of games like Powerball or Mega Millions for significantly better odds of winning. Mathematicians will tell you that it is far easier to match five random numbers than six.
Let me know in the comments if you have a preference between long odds against a nice payday versus seemingly impossible odds against a staggeringly huge jackpot.
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