Illinois Instant Riches (later known as Illinois' Luckiest) was a lottery game show airing in the state of Illinois, as well as nationally on Chicago-based Superstation WGN-TV. The show was hosted by former MTV VJ Mark Goodman, with Linda Kollmeyer (who still remains with the station doing lottery drawings) as his co-host and Bill Barber as announcer.
The show was produced by Mark Goodson Productions (later Jonathan Goodson Productions), and premiered on July 9, 1994. The show was renamed Illinois' Luckiest in 1998 and aired until 2000.
For contestants to appear on the show, they must have bought an Illinois Instant Riches/Illinois' Luckiest scratch-off ticket from an Illinois Lottery retailer. If they uncover three TVs, then the ticket is sent in to the given address.
Players were randomly chosen from those tickets to be in the show's contestant pool, but only a certain number of them would be selected to play an on-stage game.
Several of the games on this show were transported to and from some other lottery game shows, most notable, Flamingo Fortune (Florida), Bonus Bonanza (Massachusetts), and NY Wired (New York); the differences are mentioned in this article. Elements from these games also carried over to the current quarterly-based Michigan Lottery game show Make Me Rich.
Read more about Illinois Instant Riches: Rules (Illinois Instant Riches), Bonus Games, Rules (Illinois' Luckiest)
Famous quotes containing the words illinois, instant and/or riches:
“An Illinois woman has invented a portable house which can be carried about in a cart or expressed to the seashore. It has also folding furniture and a complete camping outfit.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“Truly, though our element is time,
We are not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither
yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet
favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes (l. IX, 11)