Long Lotto Lines Likely as Jackpot Soars : Gaming: Tonight’s grand prize pool is expected to reach about $52 million.

It would have been bad luck for Hernan Rodriguez to wait until the last minute like most people do to buy lottery tickets.

And bad luck is the last thing anybody wants when an anticipated $52.5-million Super Lotto jackpot is up for grabs, as it is in tonight’s California Lottery drawing.

Rodriguez can’t afford to procrastinate because it will take him two hours to select the 100 sets of numbers he intends to play in today’s game.

“I use shuffled playing cards to choose my numbers. That way I don’t repeat any numbers and have more of a chance of winning,” the 18-year-old Rancho Cucamonga college student explained Friday afternoon as he went to an East Los Angeles liquor store to pick up a few dozen blank Lotto play slips to fill out.

The Whittier Boulevard store was virtually empty on Friday. But state lottery officials predict that things will have turned around by this afternoon, when players will be lined up to buy chances in tonight’s game.

The huge jackpot, the biggest since the world-record $118.8-million prize 17 months ago, is also helping turn around California’s languishing state lottery, officials say.

Lottery operators faced with two years of declining ticket sales have introduced new games and are trying new marketing techniques this year. But there’s nothing like a big jackpot to give the lottery a welcome kick.

“I think by next June we’ll be back up to speed,” lottery spokeswoman Joanne McNabb said Friday afternoon as the day’s statewide sales figures surged. “It’s not ‘Yippee!’ yet, but we’re off to a good start.”

Lottery officials say they expect that of all the tickets sold for the drawing, fully two-thirds will be sold today--pushing the prize even higher.

On Friday, however, ticket sales in the Los Angeles area were still somewhere between the wheezing stage and the Lotto fever stage.

“I’m very disenchanted with the lottery,” said Birdie Peters, a registered nurse from South Los Angeles. “I’ll probably buy $5 worth tomorrow. But the odds are so bad. I’d rather take my money and do something else with it.”

At his Florence Avenue liquor store, owner Richard Ephriam is expecting to sell about 5,000 tickets today. Customer Mel Scott, an actor and stunt man, said he plans to purchase six of them--even though he feels the 1 in 18-million odds of winning are lousy.

“They need to revamp the game so the prizes are smaller and there are more chances to win,” Scott said. “Everybody’s not so greedy. Lots of people would be satisfied with winning, say, $150,000 if there were lots of those prizes given out.”

In North Hollywood, clerk Julie Franklin was selling plenty of sodas and snacks at the Cahuenga Boulevard 7-Eleven outlet. Few customers were purchasing tickets from her lottery Quick Pick machine, however.

“I’ll buy three for myself before tomorrow, just to get my hand in,” Franklin said.

Customer Patrick Curtis, a film producer from Sherman Oaks, shook his head at that.

“I’ve never bought one and never will,” said Curtis, whose work includes “One Million Years B.C.” “If I’ve got a buck,” he said, “I’ll invest it in myself. I’ll use it toward a membership in a gym or a book or something.”

In West Los Angeles, Brian Kim was at work at his own Quik Pix outlet. It’s a Wilshire Boulevard one-hour photo-finishing store, not a lottery ticket sales machine.

“I used to buy tickets for the big jackpots, across the street at the 7-Eleven store. But no more,” Kim said. “I never won anything. I know I’m not a lucky guy.”

At the Whittier Boulevard liquor store where Hernan Rodriguez picked up his play slips, customer Ivan Miramontes bought $5 worth of tickets from stop owner Soon Yoon.

“I don’t feel very lucky,” confided Miramontes, an RTD bus driver. “I would have bought $20 worth but my car broke down and I need money to fix it.

“If I win, the first thing I’m going to buy is a new car.”