Wow. It's hard to believe this topic is still open. It's even more difficult to believe that there are die-hard players out there who refuse to accept the obvious: Corruption and fraud are on the rise in state lotteries.
In just the past ninety days, the Colorado Lottery was shut down due to "accounting irregularities." Coincidently, their lottery commissioner resigned, and a new one was installed before operations began again. Then, only yesterday, I read that the Minnesota Lottery commissioner slashed his wrists when he received news of an upcoming audit. He told his wife, "I'm afraid we might lose everything," and then he killed himself.
I spoke with Jeff yesterday, another Indiana player and a new member here. He has suspected for a long time that something wasn't right with our daily games, and then he read some of the posts here, and contacted me. He gave me some extremely valuable information regarding payouts. Indiana has the lowest payouts for their daily game than any other state. Where other states such as Georgia and Michigan have a hundred or so winners in their Pick-4 game, Indiana has only one. You don't have to take my word for it; go to the various state websites and look at the daily payout information.
Something else I discovered is that, of the 1,000 possible combinations in the Pick-3 game, 288 of them haven't been drawn in Indiana in the past five years. That's almost 30% of the field. In Michigan and Ohio, during the same period, less than 2% of the possible combinations had not been drawn. That's for over 1,800 draws. Check it yourself.
I don't, by any means, intend to convey that all lotteries are crooked. However, anyone who thinks that a game which is state-sponsored is inherently honest due only to that affiliation could be in for a rude awakening. Think about it; if you were in a room, alone with a pile of cash that reached the ceiling, wouldn't you be tempted to slip just one bill into your pocket? After all, no one would miss $100.00 out of a few million. But then, the next day, you're back in that room with a new pile of cash, and you think to yourself, "Well, surely no one would miss a measly $200.00 out of this huge lode." Maybe they won't (And stop calling me Shirley). Before you know it, you're sitting in your new car in the driveway of your new house wondering what you're going to do about this upcoming audit. So you go home and open your veins.
Greed is a funny thing. Isn't that why we play? If greed affects us, the players, why are we so willing to believe, why do we tend to take for granted, that the people who run these games are incorruptible? It should be obvious, especially now, that they are not.
Jim