Since then, the Texas lottery has generated more than $17 billion for the state of Texas. Players have won over $32.2 billion ($32,208,802,115) in prizes through Oct. 31, 2009. Thus far, the lottery has contributed more than $11.67 billion to the Foundation School Fund which helps pay for public schools in Texas. Last year it added another $1 billion.

The program is expanding - Powerball is coming to Texas. The odds are ridiculously high, almost impossible, but, as the slogan goes, you can’t win if you don’t enter. Somebody’s going to win, and it might as well be you. Then you’ll give me a finder’s fee so I can buy a tank of Chevron premium. This new (for us) get-rich-scheme has its winners. Just recently a Kentucky autoworker, Rob Anderson, and his wife cashed in a $128 million Powerball ticket he bought on Christmas Eve.

Now let’s look at our own situation. Texans can now play eight different lotteries, some are multi-state drawings with bigger prizes. The largest Mega Millions jackpot was $390 million. The largest advertised jackpot for Powerball was $365 million. The highest advertised jackpot claimed in Texas was a $330 million Mega Millions prize from a drawing held Aug. 31, 2007. That jackpot, however, was shared by four winning tickets and resulted in a prize of $82.5 million for the winner from Texas. The largest Mega Millions payout in Texas was a $128 million win from the drawing held July 6, 2007.

What would you do with that pile of money? In 2003, Bryon Woods of Eagle Lake, a diesel technician, won a $47 million Texas lottery. Then he bought and re-opened the famous Tee Pee Motel in Wharton (it’s a series of separate motel rooms, each designed in the shape of a teepee), spending $1.6 million in the process. Woods explained: “I feel good giving something back to the state of Texas.”

Then we have Joan R. Ginther of Bishop. In 2008, she won a $3 million top prize in the Millions & Millions scratch-off game. Having already won $2 million from Holiday Millionaire scratch-off in 2006 and a share of an $11 million Lotto Texas jackpot in 1993, she’s our first three-time top prize winner.

Speaking of scratch-offs, they account for 75 percent of sales by game, while Lotto Texas makes up only 5.3 percent. I have always had the paranoid theory that the scratch-offs are a rip-off. We hear about someone winning Lotto or Mega Millions, but have you ever heard of anyone winning a fortune from scratch-offs? I suspect somewhere there is a very wealthy state employee.

The lottery commission runs annual surveys to see who are, and who are not, customers. It hired the Center for Public Policy at UH which found that, percentage-wise, the citizens of El Paso (56.1) lead the state in participation, followed by Victoria (49.2), San Antonio (48.2) and Tyler (41.5). The lowest rates were in Austin (39.3) and Lubbock (29.3). But only Irving had a participation increase over the last year. The highest average monthly amount spent per player were McAllen ($25.30) and El Paso ($20.78). The lowest were and Abilene ($8.44) and Lubbock ($5.41).

What kind of Texan plays? The highest percentages are Indians – we must assume they are off the reservation and can’t get to their own casinos – and Hispanics. More men gamble than women, more are in the 35-44 age group, and those employed full-time and part-time participate more than our unemployed. Income and education are not statistically significant.

When Lotto Texas started, I, like millions of other Texans, figured I’d eventually win something, so I bought five tickets twice a week. After a while it hit me that I probably wouldn’t win, and cut back. So did a lot of other people. But each time sales lag, the Texas Lottery Commission comes up with a new game, thus we have Powerball.

Over the last year or so, in 25 of 42 states with lotteries, sales have increased for scratch-off and daily lottery games. Experts say the jump is due to the recession. In Texas, the lottery finished fiscal year 2009 in good shape: $3.72 billion in sales, its fourth best year, an increase by more than $48 million compared to the year before. Scratch-off tickets were the third highest ever, and 2009 was the best year for Mega Millions, Megaplier and Texas Two Step sales. Despite this, the percentage of us actually playing is shrinking overall, from a high in 1995 of 71 percent to 41.7 percent last year.

I have a solution to this problem: Casinos. No, Texans don’t like to gamble, and don’t want their state attracting sordid gamblers and the crime that comes with them. So the only gambling we have are state-run lotteries and scratch-offs, plus horse racing, dog racing, Bingo and trying to beat trains at grade crossings.

Texas is surrounded by casinos, placed just across the border, obviously to attract Texans. One casino in Lake Charles, L’auberge du Lac, is even built in Texas Hill Country style. Its menus list Texas chili, its shops sell T-shirts and caps for the Cowboys, Texans, Longhorns and Aggies. The casino’s parking lots are filled with vehicles sporting Texas license plates. We are paving a lot of roads and paying a lot of teachers in Louisiana, Oklahoma and in New Mexico where you can see a casino from any tall building in El Paso. Right, Texans don’t like gambling. I say we have casinos, and let the chips fall where they may – like in our classrooms.

Ashby bets at ashby2@comcast.net