Business at Rhinebeck Food and Gas received a boost in early 2016, manager Sherif Hamad said.Get more news about 彩票免费包网,you can vist loto98.com

On Jan. 4 of that year, a Tivoli woman purchased a New York Lottery Cash X100 scratch-off ticket game at the Rhinebeck store, and won the top prize of $5 million.

After that, Hamad said others came into the store hoping for another lucky draw."It does have an impact, especially if you post up the tickets," he said. "When there's a big winner, (customers) do think it's a lucky store and they do come in more."

Of course, the odds of winning don't change for customers from one shop to the next. There's a 1 in 3,399,000 chance of winning Cash X100's $5 million jackpot at any store the cards can be purchased.

But, a review of the last six years of lottery winnings over $5,000 show some retailers in Dutchess and Ulster counties, and around the state, have sold more winning tickets than others. Some of that luck can be attributed to a higher amount of traffic through the store.There have been nearly 25,000 New York Lottery tickets sold between 2012 and 2017 that yielded jackpots of at least $5,000, according to lottery records obtained by the USA Today Network's Albany Bureau through a Freedom of Information law request. That number includes more than 400 tickets sold in Dutchess and more than 250 sold in Ulster.

The Smokes 4 Less location on Freedom Plains Road in the Town of Poughkeepsie sold 12 winning tickets of $5,000 or more between 2012 and 2017, the most for any single retailer in Dutchess. The Stewart's Shops location in Red Oaks Mill saw the most money paid out in that span, $10,290,889, with the bulk coming from a $10 million ticket sold in January 2017.
In Ulster County, K & V Petroleum on Ulster Avenue in Kingston sold 22 winning tickets totaling $397,513 for the six-year span, while the Citgo Mart on Main Street in New Paltz saw the most money paid out for any spot in Ulster, $3,128,300. It had a $3 million winner in July 2014.

Estelle Ramaglia, a retired Dutchess County Sheriff's Office detective who typically buys tickets twice a day, said she likes seeing local people win big because it reminds her that anyone can win, anywhere.

"If the lotto gods are smiling on you, you'll win. If they're not, you aren't winning," the 66-year-old Town of Poughkeepsie resident said Friday while waiting to buy a ticket at the Stewart's in Red Oaks Mill. "I want to know what it feels like to scratch one of those tickets and get the big prize."

Some of the stores with the highest total of winning tickets are no surprise.

For example, the most winners came from the Carlton Cards newsstand in Penn Station in midtown Manhattan, the biggest seller of lottery tickets in the state. On average, $246,000 in lottery tickets are sold each week. In the last six years, it sold 49 tickets worth at least $5,000, including a $59 million Mega Millions jackpot in 2015.

The odds of winning Mega Millions are 1 in 302,575,350. The odds of getting struck by lightning are 1 in 700,000.New York runs the largest lottery in the nation, reaching nearly $9.9 billion in revenue last year.

The profits from the lottery go to fund education in New York. About $3.3 billion each year goes to fund schools, about 14 percent of the state's total education budget.