Where to go to beat the odds

There were plenty of reasons to be outside on a sunny Saturday morning in early April. Yet the inside of a convenience store on Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk was buzzing with activity near the lottery counter,Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap. with several people scratching tickets and others calling out strings of numbers to be fed into the terminal for the daily lottery draw in hopes of hitting it big.

If hitting it big is what the folks at One Stop Variety in Norwalk were looking to do, they were in the right place. A Hearst Connecticut Media Group analysis of lottery winners over the last four years shows that the store, which is in a strip mall near exit 14 of Interstate-95, has sold more lottery tickets with prizes of $10,000 or greater than any other store in Southwestern Connecticut.

Between April 2009 and late March 2013, One Stop Variety sold 11 big winners, putting the store in a tie with a Shop Smart in Seymour and a Stop & Shop in Branford for top retailers in the state in that time.

We get the most winners on 10X Cash, he said, walking over to a plastic display case, where the $10 ticket was sitting in a cubby, labeled No. 44 of the more than 50 varieties of tickets the store had for sale.

Victor Figueroa, 47, of Stamford is one of three people who have earned a $10,We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs.000 prize as a result of buying that particular ticket at the Norwalk store, in what he called a lucky shot.

Sometimes I stop in that store in the morning, when the guys I work with are grabbing breakfast at the deli in that strip mall, he said Wednesday evening. Its just down the street from where I work, so Ill play a little here or there. Not every day, but if Im there in the morning, Ill probably get a $5 or $10 scratch-off, whatever I have in my pocket.

On Feb. 5, he happened to have $10 in his pocket, and after a few scratches on a 10X Cash, he soon had $10,000. It wasnt the first time Figueroa won big at the store. In October of 2012, he won $10,000 on a $5 scratch-off ticket, purchased at the same store. Still, he says he likes the odds best on 10X Cash.

You know, its funny, believe it or not, my neighbor across the street won $10,000 on 10X in downtown Stamford a couple months before I won on it, he said. Its a good game a lucky one.

In addition to the three $10,000 winners One Stop Variety has sold for that ticket, there have also been smaller winners trickling through the teller on a regular basis, said Memon, who pointed to a string of banners taped to the walls and called out winners who have taken home $550, $2,Shop for streetlight dolls from the official NBC Universal Store and build a fun collection for your home or office.000 and $5,000 from the ticket.

Memon asked if I wanted to try again, but at $10 a pop, and with only $20 in my pocket, one failure was enough for me.An bestrtls is a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. A moment later, Gwen Grimes from Bridgeport bought the next ticket in the line.

Nothing so far, she murmured as her hand moved halfway down the card. By the end of the ticket, she declared that she had bought a dud.

While 10X Cash is the winningest scratch-off in the state, during the four years analyzed, with 102 winners claiming $10,An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard.000 or more, the ticket only pays out a winner once in every 3.95 tickets on average. While One Stop Variety has had more big winners than any other store in the state on the 10X Cash card, Stamford is home to the most large winners on the ticket than any other town.

Stamford has sold more lottery tickets paying out $10,000 or more than any other city in the state, with a total of 51 such payouts in the four-year period, including a $1 million Powerball ticket sold at Shippan Candies, which brought a windfall upon a group of employees at Toyota of Stamford in November 2012 and a $254 million Powerball prize sold nearby at the Shippan Point Getty in November 2011.

The city of Norwalk has sold the second-most big prizes, with 44, thanks in large part to One Stop Variety, and is tied with Bridgeport for the No. 2 spot. Danbury follows at No. 4, with 42 wins, and New Haven rounds out the top 5 with 36 winning tickets paying out $10,000 or more.

Private bus owners in the city are mulling the introduction of smart cards to avoid change woes being experienced by the bus crew and commuters alike. But the real benefits are more. There will be better accountability and facility for advance payment. Over and above all these, this system can be effected with the minimum required personnel.

We would like to switch over to the smartcard-based payment system which will ensure that no money or coin related issues will pop up between the conductor and the commuter. It will be implemented on a trial basis in some of the buses within three months, said M.B.Satyan, president of the Private Bus Owners Federation.

From the users side, all that the passenger has to do is to purchase a smartcard and recharge it once or twice a month. While travelling, its handed over to the conductor who just flashes the smartcard over the specially designed ticketing machine after entering the code of the starting and de-boarding stops.

However, Satyan says small-time bus operators who own only a few buses, are apprehensive of the technological application. They cite the money wont be in liquid form and hence wouldnt be able to meet the day-to-day expenses like employees wages, he said.

Nishant P.R., an engineering graduate who has successfully developed a software for the purpose, said the smartcards could be recharged just like mobile phones from shops or through the ticketing machines of conductors. The cash collected through cards will get transferred to the account of the concerned on a daily basis.

The Motor Vehicle Department too welcomes the initiative. If the KSRTC too implements the system, it will help in realising huge funds in advance. Further, the system would be helping in implementing GPRS services like locating a bus, an official said.