Kentucky Lottery moving drawing show to the Internet

I agree with you, live the lottery has never lost, how can we go broke and its a million of us playing versus 1 machine? to be logical on this issue a player must realize that we are gambling and not them. the lottery is a busniess and regardless of what any person says we are being tricked to believe the lottery is at random. and any one who wants to disagree Im willing to take all challangers.

I play the lottery, although its controlled because one day I may be that 1 minscule peron who gets a chance.

Real smart Scientistman, you would likely trust a real estate agent, car salesman or store clerk every day of the week. But a lottery official that has no vested interest in cheating you wont trust with your life??? Funny.

Are you saying in a life or death situation, you would choose death over the assistance of a lottery official??

The Lottery keeps a percentage and pays out a percentage.

THEY DONT MAKE EXTRA MONEY OFF OF MAKING SURE YOU LOSE.

another question is this: If all thing are equal between the lottery agency and the gambler, why then are certain numbers limited to player access?

What you’re talking about is something known in the industry as a liability limit. That means lotteries have a maximum amount they’ll pay out on a drawing, so the number of certain numerical combinations that are popular (in KY triple and quadruple digits are big) are limited. This is done so we can stay in business quite honestly – if we lose tens of millions of dollars over a number of drawings over the course of the year, we could be out of business. The other model is pari-mutuel, where all proceeds are combined into one prize pool and then split among all winners. This means when popular numbers hit the payout can be low – I’ve seen 3 digit payouts lower than $100 in some states. By having the liability limit in place, we can guarantee a $600 top prize in our Pick 3 game.

From aux8b:

Is the ky lottery still thinking about changing the pick 3 and the pick 4 pay out to an lesser amount ?

I’m not aware that we’ve ever seriously considered this – so no, there are no plans to cut the top prize on these games at this point.

From Stack47:

Maybe we can get Chip to explain the process the KY Lottery uses to insure every bet has an equal chance of winning using live ball drawings.

We have tons of security mechanisms in place to make sure every numerical combnation on a game has an equal chance of being drawn. There are multiple draw ball sets for each game, and the ball set to be used is randomly selected before each draw by the roll of a die or a pill pull. We do test drawings for each game prior to the actual drawing – if a certain number comes up more times that statistically normal, we retest it. If it happens again, we pull the ball set for inspection. The balls are weighed on a regular basis to make sure their weight varies by less than a fraction of a gram (don’t know the exact number but it’s small), and they are retired after a set period of time. In other words, we go to great pains to make sure every number has an equal chance of being randomly drawn.

Finally, although this wasn’t a question, I felt compelled to respond to this statement by Scientistman:

cutting cost is the BIGGEST LIE they make up. Its what they all say.

That’s not true. It’s MUCH less expensive for a lottery to do away will ball machines and live televised drawing and go to RNG. Just having a draw show alone – if lotteries are paying for show placements or making ad guarantees – can easily cost well over $1 million or more a year. That draw process I described above is time-consuming and requires resources – RNG drawings can be done in a matter of minutes. There’s a tremendous amount of overhead to having a live draw show with balls and machines that goes away when a state makes the move to RNG, and that’s no lie. And when you come off TV, RNG drawings are much more efficient. I’m to some of your other comments, I consider myself pretty trustworthy (!).

That being said, the technology available to us now to go with the Internet-based draw really didn’t come into play until the last couple of years. The cost of building an Internet studio has gone down DRAMATICALLY, and the cost of having the bandwidth through a streaming service is much more reasonable. This wasn’t an option several years ago when many states started looking at the expense of a draw show – you were either on the air or out with RNG. Now, the model that we’re using (and New Jersey pioneered) is a viable alternative.

So there we go. I’ll be checking in over the next few days to see if there are other questions. Thanks again for playing, and best of luck to you!

Thanks ChipP 2, your doing an awesome job!! Keep up the excellent work!!

I use the word "cheating" as a general term because that was the effect. Any TN lottery player who bought a double was cheated because they couldn't win, but it's the same as buying any defective product. There is no proof of fraud by the TN Lottery and they exchanged the tickets for money or tickets for a future drawing.

It was a simple mistake but the problem wasn't easy to identify because it was in the computer program and egos and stubbornness may be the reason the problem wasn't discovered sooner.

Thanks for the reply, Chip!

Kentucky has three $2 a ticket games (including Powerball), any talk about replacing one of those games with a $1 and 50 cent Pick-5 game similar to the Pick-5 games in Georgia, Ohio, and Quinto in PA?

Chip,

Thanks for the wonderful, educational reply!!   I always wondered what measures were used for assuring a random ball draw.

Have an Ale8 on me.

Thanks Ronnie316 - I really appreciate the kind words!

Hey there Stack47. No plans on having another $1 or 50 cent game at this time. You never say never though, and we're always looking at what other states are doing and having success with. Quinto is a really cool game - I've always been a fan of it!

Thanks zinniagirl! I always smile whenever I go in one of our retailers in Central KY and I see a widow's key bottle opener attached to the cash register with a string - that means Ale 8 is about to be had! I love that stuff!

Streaming the drawings on the net is much better than trying to catch the T.V. drawings because of the time restraints. There is now enough time to see the actual drawing and hear the results. Showing the two auditors with clipboards is a nice touch too.