PORTLAND — Tri-State Megabucks officials want players to “just imagine” hitting the big one, but they also worry about drawing numbers that would pay winners next to nothing.

“I can’t imagine that the players would be very happy that they hit a jackpot and wound up with a couple of hundred bucks a year,” Megabucks spokesman Dave Long said.

But the tiny prizes are possible in the numbers game played in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, according to a report Tuesday in the Evening Express.

Lottery officials can use computers to check out the most popular combinations found on players’ tickets, and they find some tickets that are chosen over and over by numerous players.

The combinations, often involving regular sequences of numbers, or numbers chosen along rows or diagonals of the tickets marked by players, would have low payoffs because so many people choose them that a jackpot would be divided among hundreds of ticket holders.

For example, when the jackpot rose to $9.6 million last month, there were 1,208 players who chose the numbers 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 on the week of the winning drawing. If those numbers had been drawn, winning players would have each gotten the grand total of $7,996, paid out in yearly installments of $399.

Another popular combination was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. If those numbers had been the winners, there would have been 933 winning tickets worth just $518 per year over the next 20 years.

As the Express put it, “There’s a bunch of numbers out there you just don’t want to pick.”

Long agreed, saying lottery officials were happy to spread the word on numbers that could pay so little.

“You want to let the players know there’s some combinations you should stay away from,” Long said. “We want people to be happy with their once-in-a-lifetime jackpot.”

If hundreds of people ever end up dividing the cash, just writing the checks could impose an administrative burden on the lottery. There also would be the problem of coordinating the standard news conference with winners.

“We’d rent a room in the civic center in Augusta to hold a press conference,” Long said. “It would take a lot longer than our single- or double-winner press conferences.”

Other number combinations that could bring in potential low payoffs if they hit include 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36, or 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 36. Also on the list are 4, 7, 9, 13, 24 and 32, and 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12.

Players who want to avoid the risk of winning a small jackpot might also do well to refrain from playing 3, 7, 11, 15, 19 and 23, or 6, 11, 16, 21, 26 and 31. Other poor choices include 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24, as well as 3, 12, 19, 28, 31 and 35.

If any of those combinations had hit during the week of the $9.6 million jackpot, winners would have gotten less than $950 per year over the next 20 years, officials said.