USA's Multi-State Video Lottery

The USA has recently seen the introduction of the first ever multi-state video lottery called Ca$hola. The game is operational in Delaware, Rhode Island and West Virginia. The lottery boasts a shared prize pool with a progressive jackpot that will start at $250,000 and is expected to reach around $1 million once a month.

Ca$hola is played via Video Lottery Terminals (VLTs) which are manufactured and controlled by different companies in each of the three states. An existing network of VLTs exists, but more terminals have been added to prepare for the new wave of interest that Ca$hola is likely to create.

Players insert coins into the Ca$hola VLT (pennies, nickels or quarters, depending on the state they are playing in) and there are two components to the game. The first is a basic lottery game with odds and payouts that vary from state to state in order to comply with local gaming laws. The second is the progressive Ca$hola jackpot game which is common to all three states. The odds of a player winning this jackpot are around one in seven million, but players must bet the maximum allowed - $2.25 - in order to qualify for it.

As is common in the United States, those who win the jackpot will be given a choice between receiving a cash payment or an annuity which provides a fixed income for a certain number of years - in Ca$hola's case twenty years.

Video lottery games are very popular in casinos and similar outlets in the States. They're convenient, fun to play and offer the chance to win some serious sums of money. Now that Ca$hola has gone down in history as the USA's first multi-state video lottery game offering potentially life-changing progressive payouts, video lottery players in other states will be hoping that more multi-state video lotteries will be launched in the future.

1 August 2006

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