Ticket sales resume August 25
By Todd Northrop
After the Texas Lottery shut down All or Nothing for nearly 3 months, sales for the lottery game will resume on Sunday, August 25, with the first drawing on August 26 at 10:00 am.
On June 3, 2013, the Texas Lottery stopped sales for the All or Nothing game when it was discovered that the game's design could possibly lead to unusually and unreasonably high prize payouts. Even though the game has more than 2.7 million possible number combinations, players began gravitating to a smaller subset of the number combinations available for selection, raising the possibility that should those numbers be drawn, a sudden massive payout that could wreak havoc on the lottery's finances.
The Lottery Commission said it was notified by GTECH Corp., the lottery operator in Texas, of the game design issue.
(See Texas Lottery suspends sales for 'All or Nothing' game, Lottery Post, June 4, 2013.)
The lottery issued statements that the game shutdown was a precautionary measure, and was not due to a large number of players winning.
To counter the potential for an unreasonably large game payout, the lottery has changed the rules regarding payouts of the game's top prize in the event of many winners.
Under normal circumstances, a player will claim a prize of $250,000 if they win the All or Nothing top prize. That will continue to be the case, as long as there are 20 or fewer top prize-winning tickets in any one particular drawing.
After 937 drawings in the game's nearly two years of existence, the most number of top prize winners in any drawing were two. So the new rules are completely in the realm of theory at this point.
Nevertheless, if any one drawing has more than 20 top prize-winning tickets, the new rules state that the prize will be paid out on a pari-mutuel basis. A total prize pot of $5 million will be split by all the top prize-winning tickets. For example, if there are 25 top prize-winning tickets, each ticket will be paid out $200,000, because $5 million split 25 ways is $200,000 each.
According to the Texas Lottery, the practice of setting a liability cap is a common lottery industry practice for games that offer fixed prizes.
Since All or Nothing launched Sept. 9, 2012, there have been 29 jackpot prize winners. Of those winners, 14 matched all 12 numbers drawn and 15 winners matched none of the numbers drawn.
All or Nothing is drawn four times per day: at 10:00 am, 12:27 pm, 6:00 pm, and 10:12 pm. Players choose 12 numbers out of a pool of 24 numbers. A player wins the top prize by matching either all 12 numbers, or none of the 12 numbers, on their ticket. A variety of other lower prizes can be won by matching fewer than 12 numbers.
The All or Nothing winning numbers are published on Lottery Post's Texas Lottery Results page minutes after each drawing takes place.
First!
Why cant I ever find the games with flaws and win some before its discovered?
Notice that the Texas lottery didn't say they mind players paying massive payouts to the lottery that could possibly wreck havoc on their personal finances.
In this case it would not have benefited any 1 player even if left unnoticed.
The "flaw" has to do with the fact that the lottery has "All Even," "All Odd," "First 12," and "Last 12" choices on the playslip in addition to the 24 different numbers available. So naturally, if there is a drawing where all even, odd etc numbers are chosen, then everyone who marked those choices on the playslip will win the jackpot. The fault is not really that of the game but how the lottery itself marketed playing it.
People who play 12 numbers AND the opposite 12 that hit the jackpot (this has actually happened several times) will still win $250K for each play. Only if they play more than 20 of the same (or if more than 19 other players win too) will their winnings be reduced to pari-mutuel.
I hope this game comes back as a success.
"For example, if there are 25 top prize-winning tickets, each ticket will be paid out $200,000"
And as a more realistic example, if one of the 4 really popular combinations that caused the game to be withdrawn should happpen to win, each of the hundreds of winning players will collect 10 or 20 grand.
With the redesign, this game should be a lottery commission's dream. The odds are very good that they'll never have to pay out a prize to any of the wildly disproportionate number of players who put their money on just 4 of the 2.7 million possible combinations. It's a bit like having a bunch of players just give them money without even bothering to get a ticket in return.
When I read this story I nearly had a heart attack!
I thought to myself I been on Lp for TWO years already? I had a Rip Van Winkle moment.
So I did a results search, and I have the first game as
9/10/2012
So if you dont count the last approximate three months the game has been shut down, then the game is barely 9 months old.
I am such a stickler for lottery details.
As for the game coming back, I would rather play Texas Cash five.
How unfortunate I didn't win first before it was shut down. Now that the lottery resumes, they need to do a lot of marketing to attract other players back to them again. Since most players might have gone to the nearest state. I hope the prize will be high now that the lottery starts again.