The entry period for the Western States Lottery closes tonight at midnight, so if you're on the fence it's time to make up your mind. As the lottery works, it doesn't actually cost anything to enter, so there's actually a bit of extra procrastination time as I assume you can decline the entry if you win in the lottery without losing any kind of deposit. Seems like a weird way to do it considering the number of people wanting to get in, as it's only going to increase the number of entrants and then cause additional headaches when people start to turn down their slots when it comes to time to chunk up the cash, but as they say ... whatever!

So in 2006, there were approximately 1,000 entrants and the chances of picking up one of the 400 spots was 37%, meaning there were just 30-40 spots taken by those who qualified outside the lottery (top ten from previous year, two-time lottery losers).

As of this morning there were 1,624 names in the lottery. If we call that 1,700 by the end of the day and assume that 60 spots are taken up before the lottery happens on December 5, that leaves 1,640 names in the hat for 340 spots. I make that a close to one in five shot of getting in: a roll of the (five-sided) dice.