By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
Five white balls popped up in the world-record-shattering Powerball jackpot.
Just three tickets — sold in California, Florida and Tennessee — matched all five white balls plus the red Powerball.
Across New Jersey, players like Tyrel Lizama checked their tickets.
“I was just praying, please please, just help me, Lord, please help me,” he said.
And, look — he did match a few numbers.
“Three white balls — 8, 27 and 34,” he said.
“I had no spider senses on this one. I didn’t think anybody in New Jersey was going to win,” said Al Telsey of Westfield.
New Jersey can boast two winners who matched five white balls — a $2 million ticket sold in Westampton and a $1 million ticket in Jamesburg.
And 46 third-prize winners matched four white balls and won $50,000 each. But most people won about zero,- and that’s easy to shrug off if you didn’t bet the farm. Tyrel bet $66 and won $14.
“The whole thing is, I was just going to see if it’d be a good investment. Unfortunately, it wasn’t, really,” he said.
“My brother spent a little over $100 and he went to different places, hoping to increase his odds. But, no luck,” said Troy Busby.
“We usually put in like a group kind of thing, so it adds up being a couple of bucks. So no one I know got too crazy,” said Dennis O’Leary of Jackson.
For some people, jackpots can bring disaster.
“These people might buy 50 to 100 tickets,” said Neva Pryor with New Jeresy’s Council on Compulsive Gambling.
She says calls for help always spike after record-breaking jackpots, just like after the Super Bowl and March Madness.
“I’m talking about people who could be betting their rent, betting their electric money, betting their food money,” she said. “Because they’re not thinking like you or I might think, OK, tomorrow might be another day.”
She estimates 3 million problem gamblers call New Jersey home and says Lottery Fever — with its nonstop media coverage — can push even recovering gamblers off the wagon. She urges anyone facing problems to call or click for help.
The odds of winning 292 million to 1 for every ticket, one hundred tickets cost a couple of hundred bucks, they are worth pretty much nothing.