About the Connecticut Lottery

The Connecticut lottery became the fourth US state to get its own lottery when it began selling tickets on February 15, 1972. The original CT lotto game was simply called ‘The Lottery' and draws were held every week with winning numbers paying out prizes for as much as $5,000.

The CT lottery has come a long way since 1972 with seven single state lotto games now being offered in the state. The original lottery is still running under the name of the Connecticut Classic Lotto. Connecticut Classic Lotto winning numbers can help players to win millions of dollars with jackpots starting at $1 million. Draws for this popular state lotto game are held every Tuesday and Friday.

Connecticut has a number of lottery games that are exclusive to the state including Cash 5 and Lucky 4 Life. There are also Midday 3, Midday 4, Play 3 and Play 4 available in Connecticut, and similar games can of course be found in most other states, such as New York and California. And finally, how could we forget the mothers of all lottery games, Mega Millions and Powerball, both of which can be played by Connecticut residents.

Since first becoming available in November 1995 and January 2010 respectively, the ticket sales for Powerball and Mega Millions games in Connecticut have been disproportionately larger in the state than its size would suggest. In fact, when it first became available, the CT Powerball wasn't just popular with Connecticut lotto players, as many New Yorkers often purchased their Mega Millions numbers in NY, and then travelled across the border to purchase their Powerball tickets. The demand for CT lottery tickets used to be so high that New York lottery fans had been blamed for causing long traffic lines on the roads connecting New York and the nearby Connecticut towns of Greenwich and Danbury. It used to be a running joke that you always knew when there were hundred million dollar Powerball lottery rollovers because of the traffic jams in these towns!

This problem was eased when New York began to sell Powerball tickets in 2010, meaning that Danbury in particular became less popular with lotto players. Danbury has had some considerable lottery luck over the years and is the only place in Connecticut that's produced more than one Powerball winner. Danbury was the home of Donald Peters who, in November 2008, won $10 million after purchasing two Connecticut Lottery tickets from a 7-Eleven store. This was the twentieth year that Peters and his wife had purchased tickets following a family tradition that they'd developed over the years. Unfortunately for Peters and his family, he suffered a fatal heart attack later that day and unknowingly left his huge jackpot to his 78 year old wife of 59 years.

While many US state lotteries depend on Mega Millions and Powerball to offer multi-million dollar jackpots, Connecticut's Classic Lotto has also given away some enormous jackpots. One of these went to Mary Strange who won an incredible $28.5 million on January 1, 2002. The fact that she was the only player with a winning CT lottery ticket on that day meant that she received the entire jackpot.

Another single ticket winner is Rahul Patel who won $25 million when playing CT Powerball. The win occurred on June 27, 2009, and saw Patel take home the entire amount. However, Patel wasn't the only Connecticut lottery player celebrating that day as 15,242 CT lotto players found themselves with winning numbers.