Illinois' Luckiest

Illinois Instant Riches
Created by	Jonathan Goodson
Presented by	Mark Goodman with Linda Kollmeyer
Narrated by	Bill Barber Tony Russell
Composer(s)	Score Productions
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	150+
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Release
Original network	Syndicated (Illinois only) WGN (nationally)
Original release	July 9, 1994 – August 15, 1998

Illinois' Luckiest
Created by	Jonathan Goodson
Presented by	Mark Goodman with Linda Kollmeyer Jeanne Sparrow
Narrated by	Tony Russell
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	75+
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Release
Original network	Syndicated (Illinois only) WGN (nationally)
Original release	August 22, 1998 – October 21, 2000

Illinois Instant Riches (later known as Illinois' Luckiest) is 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 Mark Goodman, with Linda Kollmeyer 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.

Fifteen contestants were in the contestant pool. Kollmeyer would spin a wheel that was hooked to lights above each contestant's seat. When the wheel stopped, the player whose seat was lit would play a game, in addition to winning a set of lottery tickets.

During a special remote broadcast from Arlington Race Course in 1997, the selection and bonus rounds were modified. Random numbers were drawn to choose contestants, pulled from the same kind of machine used for their lottery drawings. Also, the original bonus game, Knockout, was played in place of the current (at the time) game, Pot O'Gold, and modified its format to account for the returning champion.

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