How the popular multi-state game evolved
By Kate Northrop
In April, state lotteries participating in the popular multi-state Lucky for Life lottery game announced that the game would be moving from bi-weekly drawings to a once-daily draw format.
Now that the changeover has officially transpired since last Monday, Jul. 19, Lottery Post took a closer look at how and why the game offering players the opportunity to win $1,000 a day for life evolved as a whole.
For a little over a week now, Lucky for Life players have been getting a taste of the new daily draw format. Some may view the decision to increase the number of drawings with disdain, now having to purchase more multi-draws to "keep up" with the drawings, while others may feel pleased with more frequent opportunities to win a lifetime prize.
Regardless, changing over to daily drawings was a process long in the making, modeled after the same change that Cash4Life underwent in 2019.
Greg Smith, the Executive Director of the Connecticut Lottery and spokesperson for the Lucky for Life Game Group, said that there were a number of considerations preceding the decision, the first of which was to explore changes to the game that might stimulate sales.
"We decided to go to daily drawings after having talked with the Cash4Life Game Group members and reviewed their sales growth success from them going from a bi-weekly drawing to a daily drawing," Smith told Lottery Post. "Their change started two years ago, so we started looking at that for at least the first year. That was step one of making the decision to go to daily drawings."
The next step in the process, Smith explained, was coming up with what needed to be done to implement a changeover to daily drawings.
"We had to look at the effort that was going to be required and the related contracts at cost needed to keep it 'like kind,' or exactly the same, as the bi-weekly," Smith elaborated.
One option to meet these goals was to continue to have the Connecticut Lottery conduct the drawings at their studio location, which is where the Lucky for Life drawings physically took place before they went daily. Another possibility was having a different state take over and conduct them.
Ultimately, the members of the Lucky for Life game unanimously voted on appointing MUSL as the game group administrator, which meant that they would conduct the drawings. Currently there are 23 state lotteries in the game group.
With the decision to appoint MUSL as the drawing operator, however, that meant other changes to the game as well.
The Lucky for Life Game Group voted to use digital drawings over continuing with traditional mechanical ball drawing machines, but players were unaware of the fact in stark contrast to how the changeover to daily drawings was widely publicized.
Smith indicated that MUSL's Digital Drawing System (DDS) — which is how the lotteries refer to computerized drawings that use a random number generator (RNG) to generate the winning numbers — were more profitable for the states than a traditional lottery ball drawing.
In a follow-up, Lottery Post inquired about the analysis that was conducted prior to the decision to switch over to digital drawings, to determine the exact cost difference between the digital draw system and the previous lottery ball drawings.
"There was a combination of resources, method for displaying of draw results, and cost of every aspect of game operation going from bi-weekly to daily that were taken into consideration," Smith said in his response. "The ball machine and DDS were already in existence, so their cost was not a factor."
Since daily drawings began, numerous players had reached out to Lottery Post wondering whether the game was still drawn mechanically. One member said it took several email exchanges with the Massachusetts Lottery to finally confirm that the game had indeed switched to digital drawings. Other players scrutinized the new drawing video format, viewable on the Lucky for Life YouTube channel. Some voiced their concerns about the change, which now shows numbers appearing on a screen as opposed to a classic drawing video featuring a host and ball drawing machines.
Now that MUSL performs the drawing services for Lucky for Life, the drawings no longer take place at the Connecticut Lottery's studio and are now conducted at MUSL offices in Iowa.
"We know that change in methods can catch some players' attention and maybe raise some concerns, and yet, the idea of the increase that we are seeing right now, still early in the change process, has been good so far," Smith related. "We hope that players will recognize that the digital draw systems are used in the U.S. lottery industry across many states every day, and so they are reliable, they are certified... performing the draws successfully and properly. This game group is now changed over to those, and we look forward to continued good results."
Thanks, Todd for following up on this story. It's helpful to see the thinking behind this change in how they draw the number. Still don't like it. There's something to watching the numbers drawn by a machines that reminds me too much of Frank Tipton and Hot Lotto. I play less number sets now with the switch to daily, but I'm still playing.
So now they are saying that the Digital Drawing System(DDS) is more profitable for the states than the traditional system of the big clear drawing ball complete with a smiling, perky host. Well it may be more profitable for the states but the problem is everyone sees how the traditional drawing ball system works, we accept it win or lose. Is the digital system more reliable? What is more profitable for the states is not always what's best for the players.
Thank you so much for posting this Todd. I will never play L4L again. I get that it is labor intensive to have mechanical drawings with weighing each ball before each drawing to make sure they are within the specified nanogram allowance (might have my Metric wrong on this). But the bottom line is folks like the mechanical balls not some predetermined winner/non winner. Good riddance L4L and hope we get rid of it here in Kentucky.
The fact that they didn't disclose the change from mechanical balls to computer drawing at the time of the change has left a bad taste in my mouth.
I, too, am done with this game.
The fact that Lucky for Life was not transparent when they went to a so-called "random" computer drawing let all of us players know that they were trying to pull a fast one and hope that no one would notice or publicize. Bravo to Lottery Post for doing the legwork and bringing this issue out to the forefront. The reason that the computer drawing are probably more profitable could also be because there are obvious ways to program the software that does not allow for unexpected large payouts since the computer that draws the numbers also is usually the same system that tallies the sales on all number combinations.
I travel up and down the East Coast and love to play the daily Pick 3 and Pick 4, but I do not play in Delaware or D.C., both of which use computer drawings. I heard that New Jersey is getting a computer drawing system, supposedly as a back-up, but if I they go to computer drawing I won't play there either anymore. I love seeing the live drawing for myself on line or on television, which seem to be more transparent and fair for all of us players. Again, thank you Lottery Post for great journalism.
It would seem that Lottery Players are losing the battle against Computerized Lottery Drawings.
It leaves them wondering if Drawings are really Random:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/31/united-states-lottery-numbers-broken-system-identical-drawings-controversy/1863102002/
...And when Powerball and or Mega millions switches to RNG playing from me goes to maybe once/month.
* If PB & MM went the RNG route Jeff, it would die on the vine as it should!
Has anyone added up the cost to play each of their state lottery drawn games every day for just one week?
The Kentucky Lottery offers seven daily games and the minimum bet for straight/box pick-3 and pick-4 is $1 so add $28 to the weekly total and another $7 for Cash Ball and $14 for Five Card Cash. Then there is the $2 a ticket Lucky for life at $14 a week for each and with MM is drawn twice a week and PB now three times a week add another $10 a week. .
If the math is correct that's a minimum $59 a week if you want daily action on each game.
According the annual financial report over 65% of ticket sales are scratch-offs, Keno, online instant games, Fast Play, and Cash Pop. It looks like more money is spent on games where the results are known in no more than 4 minutes.
I'm pretty sure the idea is to offer players a variety of both drawn and instant outcome games. If you don't like a particular game because of odds, payoffs, how it's drawn or whatever, nobody is forcing you to play it.
Cash Poop (POP) as I call it has to the worst of the worse from KLC. Like you said don't like it, don't play and I don't. Way too many ZERO payouts.
I had suggested that CB 225 increase to $2 each with Progressive Jackpots starting @ $225K...it got sent to the appropriate dept for review.
It costs next to nothing to use a mechanical ball drop machine. The REAL REASON they go with digital RNG is it is easier to rig the drawings and cheat the players. Instances of cheating in state lotteries by computer RNG have been publicized several times in the press.
I will not play.
Interesting patterns happening with this since changing to computer!
In multiple states Pick 5 games a set of five winning numbers has been drawn twice. Connecticut's Cash 5 has had three sets of five winning numbers drawn three times. I'm not sure whether or not all of the states Pick 5 games are using a mechanical ball and drum, or if they use an automated RNG, and the matrix for each states game varies. Some states use a 5/36 matrix while others have 5/35 and still others have a 5/39 matrix.
For instance Florida Fantasy5 (5/36) has had 59 sets of five duplicate winning numbers. Massachusetts Mass cash (5/35) has drawn a duplicate set of five numbers a total of 59 times. Mass Cash has also seen one set of winning numbers be drawn three times. (4-10-24-25-27 has been drawn three times. Once on 4/7/2013, again on 1/22/2014 and for a third time on 7/24/2015) New York's Take5 (5/39 and drawn twice daily) has seen at least 54 sets of five duplicate winning numbers drawn.
Given that the article talks about duplicate sets of numbers drawn by a RNG across multiple states, I'm willing to bet that a duplicate set of five winning numbers has been drawn in two or more states. That doesn't strike me as being all that unusual. What does strike me as being strange would be if one of the sets that was drawn twice (or three times) in one state was also drawn once in another state(s) Pick 5 game.
I've no automated way of comparing various states Pick 5 games to see if any set of five winning numbers has been drawn in two or more states. Nor do I have a computer program that could determine if any of the duplicated sets drawn in one state were also drawn in another state as well. It sure would be nice to have software that could do that and to see the output it might yeild.
Wouldn't it be unbelievable if a set of five winning numbers was drawn twice in Florida, and that same set of five numbers was drawn twice in Connecticut? I doubt that's ever happened, but this is the lottery I'm writing about, so who really knows??? G5