Missouri Lottery Ignites Controversy with Computerized DrawingsPrevious TopicNext Topic

GO RICK! You hit it on th

Ball machines have been good enough for the last 30 years or so, so why the heck do they seem so determined to switch to computerized drawings?   The lottery officials must think they are going to make the game more difficult to win or they would not even mess with it. Lottery officials are DIRTY people!   The job that they have is too make sure that nobody wins the game. I'm sure they think they are screwing us over somehow! Somebody needs to write a letter to president Bush, maybe he can do something about this! This is a serious matter!

Residents of Big Mo should watch for an upcoming announcement stating that live drawings will no longer be broadcast due to lack of player interest. That's how it happened in Indiana, except that Indiana actually downloaded their RNG from a public site on the internet.

Security for these machines is considerably less bulletproof than for the ball machines. In my home state, one of our official draw machines is actually housed at one of the Hoosier Lottery's vendors, Scientific Games, Inc. Oddly, they don't see this as a conflict of interest. Again, I'm going to point out that if something is computerized, it uses a PROM or an EPROM, which means that it can be programmed. In addition, a simple if/ then statement added to the end of the call command would enable an insider to predetermine the number, and even an audit won't reveal any wrongdoing if the perpetrator deletes the errant code. He can just put it back again next week, and who would be the wiser?

Indiana also claimed that they made the switch to an RNG to save money. In fact, they estimate their annual savings to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $600k per year. However, their annual report shows that they lost $100 million in revenues in the year 2000, their first year using the RNG. Their earnings have never recovered to pre-2000 levels, so how much money have they actually saved?

The ONLY viable reason that any state would switch from the standard, universally-accepted ping-pong ball method to a computerized electronic random number generator is that the RNG makes it very simple to manipulate their online games. They can minimize payouts on their daily Pick-3, Pick-4 and Pick-5 games, thus increasing revenues. Also, they can increase their lotto jackpot amounts by rolling the jackpot over and over, thereby increasing  ticket sales.

I would suggest Missouri players check into this further and find out what prompted the change. If your state is deeply in debt, as Indiana is, you might want to find a border state in which to spend your lottery dollars. You might want to run to a border state, and take your money with you, while it's still your money.

This is a very bad situation but, unfortunately, you'll find your lawmakers and public powers, for the most part, unsympathetic to sound arguments againt the infernal machine. Your Attorney General will tell you that if any wrongdoing is discovered, he'll be defending the criminals against your charges. Your State Representatives will want to cover up the criminal activity so that the people who cheated the population of an entire state won't go to jail or even lose their jobs. The FBI won't get involved because they don't want to offend state government agencies, on whom they depend for cooperation in federal investigations.

The best you can do is to find an honest newspaper reporter, such as Kevin Leininger of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, who is willing to work with you for as long as it takes to get enough evidence to make a story. Hopefully, the good people of Missouri will be more interested in the situation than the ignorant population of my home state. Residents of Indiana, apparently, don't care that they're being cheated, or perhaps they just can't read; the story appeared on the front page. I fully expected the newspaper to be flooded with letters to the editor following the publication of the Hoosier Lottery frauds. The actual number of indignant replies: 0. That's right; not one letter. Kevin did an excellent job writing the article, and LosingJeff certainly did his part, so I can only fault my fellow Hoosiers for stupidly failing to respond.

To all my friends in Missouri, you have my deepest and most heartfelt sympathies, as I know what you're up against. Organize. Gather in force. Visit havoc upon your public officials and express your outrage. Contact your local newspapers. Write a letter to the editor and ask your neighbor to write one as well. If that doesn't get the results you seek, write another and, this time, ask two or three of your neighbors to write, too. If it's just one or two of you trying to change things, you probably won't have much luck, but I don't think you'll have that problem in Missouri. After all, your residents know how to read a newspaper, and I'm sure they can also write. 

I don't suppose a few of you would consider moving to Indiana? We could really use the help, and it would also boost Indiana's collective IQ to somewhere close to that of plant life.   

Good luck, Missouri! 

Jim, we are adding a midday

Jim, very good post.Thank you.

Bryan, I hadn't heard of the gas gizmo, but it just goes to show how electonic things can easily be manipulated.

Public safety officials in IL designed a system for changing stop lights to green for their progress to an emergency.  Now common folks own these things just because they're in a hurry to get soewhere.  Hope the poor souls needing the medical sevice don't suffer from this selfishness.

Good luck in MO, Bryan, and like Jim said, fight it tooth and nail or quit playing if it happens.

One more thing, does anyone trust pick 3 draws that are not publicly televised so the players feel some concept of honesty in the draws?  It seems to me that the cost of televising a drawing is a small pittance compared to lost revenues as Jim pointed out so well what has happened in his state.

Funny thing is, most states' midday drawings generate zero revenue, and are actually loss leaders.

In Indiana, for example, the midday Pick-3 game makes only 5% of what the evening game brings in. The same figures hold true for their Daily-4 midday game vs. the evening game, so they're actually losing money on both of these midday draws, if you use the figures from their annual report.

When a state changes its drawing format, they can safely add a midday drawing since the practice draws will essentially nullify the influence of the law of averages in both the midday and evening draws. In other words, the two drawings you don't see, the ones that take place before the actual drawing to ensure that the machine is operating properly, will absorb any apparent discrepancies in the average number of times any given digit will appear within a defined period of time (Oh, yes; that's much clearer...??!).

Simply put, for each drawing, they actually perform two practice draws, the results of which you will never see. It would be like skipping two days of entering data into your system grids for, say, the evening Pick-4 game in a state that uses ping-pong balls. Do you think you could make accurate predictions by tracking only three draws a week in your state's game?

Using an RNG also cuts down severely on the number of winners. This is a principle the state lotteries just don't get; winners sell tickets. When I won $6,800 in the Pick-4, everybody in town (so it seemed) suddenly began buying tickets for a game they hadn't previously thought about twice. "But," they reasoned, "if he can do it, I can do it," and they were ostensibly correct in that assumption. These lottery commissioners act as though the prize money were coming out of their pockets, and they need to be made to understand the concept of the game: People play the lottery to win money, not to donate their disposable income to the state.

A friend of mine tells this story:

"Every year, I put $100.00 on the Cubbies to win the Superbowl. The odds are in the neighborhood of 1 in 100 billion, but if they win just once, I'll be richer than Bill Gates."

Putting a dollar on the Pick-3 or Pick-4 number in Indiana is a similar gamble, but with a considerably smaller payoff.

I guess I just don't see why any business that generates hundreds of millions of dollars per year would make it a priority to save a few thousand bucks at the expense of its own customer base. In my opinion, the Missouri legislature has just put a price on its integrity, and that price is $80,000.00. 

Eventually, the state lotteries will put themselves out of business with all this money they're saving with their RNG's.

What MO wasn't telling any

Jim695,

I bet all the money I have that the Cubbies won't win the Super Bowl.  Baseball teams don't play in the Super Bowl!!

Quote: O

Interesting the offending press release seems to have vanished off the Missouri lottery web site.  They now have this which makes it sound like they are continuing regular type draws, but I suspect it's a trick to wean players off the normal draw with real balls instead of the computerized fake drawing.

"Pick 3 tickets will be in high demand starting Monday, July 26. To kick off the new midday drawings, the Missouri Lottery will run a four-week Pick 3 Midday Bonus Numbers Promotion, in which midday Pick 3 players will have an extra chance to win. After the regular midday Pick 3 drawing, Lottery personnel will draw from seven balls in a separate container; six of the balls are white and one of the balls is orange. If the orange ball is drawn, Lottery drawing officials will draw a second set of Pick 3 numbers, giving the player two chances to win. If a white ball is drawn, it will be held out of the next days drawing and remain out of the mix until the orange ball is drawn. Whenever the orange ball is drawn, all seven balls will be replaced for the next midday Pick 3 draw. The promotion will end Aug. 21.color=#0000ffPROMOTIon DETAILS  "

Visit . . .

http://www.lotto-logix.com/weasels.html

BobP

Oddly enough, I can't find the promo details you are referring to. I even clicked the link you provided. It said, it was a dead link...hmmm? They have used the orange ball method to boost sales before when things got a little slow for the P3. And considering the letter MO lottery sent to me the other day they will have to use the ball machines to have a second drawing. According to that letter the programming of the new computerized drawing system only allows one draw per day per game. It is one of the security measures...hmmm?

Later,

Bryan  :)

Wow...28 comments (including this one).