Connecticut Mix & Match

Connecticut Mix & Match is to be introduced by the Connecticut Lottery at an unspecified date. [http://www.lotteryinsider.com/vol41/no1.htm#11] [http://www.ctlottery.org/agenda-b-013108.pdf] [http://azgamingdesigns.com/CLC.aspx] A similar game, also by Arizona Gaming Designs, LLC, of Pittsburgh, has been offered in Pennsylvania (also called "Mix & Match") since January 2007. (The Hoosier Lottery's game of this name is played much differently.)

Players will choose five numbers from a field of 20 numbered balls (the Pennsylvania game, the first, and only, such offering in the United States, has a 5/19 matrix.) The number field will be much smaller than most pick-5 games. However, matching all five numbers won't be enough to win the top prize; the numbers selected by the player must also match the order of the numbers drawn. Therefore, the winning numbers for this game will rarely be given in ascending order, unlike, for instance, the five white ball numbers in the Powerball multi-state game, also played in Connecticut. To win, a player can match at least three of the five numbers (in any order, "mixing"); a ticket will automatically win if any of the five numbers drawn "matches" in the position that the player selected that number. A single play can win both ways (e.g. a ticket matching three numbers in exact order will also win by the "any order" match.) The top prize, which is fixed, rather than a jackpot, will be $250,000 cash; the overall odds of winning will be 1 in 3.8. Each play will cost $2 (Pennsylvania's game also costs $2 to play.)

Although "Mix & Match" can be found on the Connecticut Lottery website as of September 22, 2008, the Lottery has not gone public with other details of this game, such as drawing days (Mondays and Thursdays would be most likely), and lower-tier prizes (it is believed that all prizes in Connecticut Mix & Match will be "set", rather than parimutuel. However, the odds of winning Connecticut's first prize can be determined as 1 in 20x19x18x17x16 (the 5-of-19 game substitutes "15" for "20", so the Connecticut game will have 33% longer top-prize odds than Pennsylvania's.) A traditional pick-5 game is 120 times as "easy" to win the top prize, since there are 120 ways of arranging five different numbers (5x4x3x2x1, or, 5!).