Certain combinations had no chance of winning for three weeks
By Kate Northrop
Following independent observations by Lottery Post members of an unlikely statistical anomaly in Washington, D.C. draw outcomes, the DC Lottery identified a software problem that meant certain combinations had no shot at winning prizes in three games.
The DC Lottery has implemented a fix for a coding error that prevented some tickets from winning in three of its local draw games for three weeks.
After Lottery Post members independently identified a statistically improbable occurrence in local Washington, D.C. draw results, Lottery Post staff reached out to the DC Lottery to inquire whether a problem with the drawing mechanisms existed.
"As of right now DC 5 has played all single digits 36 times in a row," Lottery Post member Newkids06 said on April 18. "Not 1 duplicate digit has been played in the 36 draws. Duplicate digits make up roughly 70% of the numbers. Mathematically this is impossible and seems to be what happened to Pick 3 and Pick 4 in Tennessee in 2007."
By the time the 40th consecutive drawing occurred without any repeating digits in DC 5, Lottery Post member JADELottery recognized enormous odds of the game continuing to draw combinations with non-repeating numbers. As he predicted, the 41st DC 5 drawing occurred with results (8-6-1-9-2) that only contained "singles," or what lottery players commonly refer to as non-repeating digits in a sequence.
According to JADELottery, the odds of the DC 5 drawing producing a singles combination without any repeat digits for 41 consecutive drawings is 1 in 242,413. It's not impossible, but improbable. By the time the game reaches its 50th consecutive drawing without a repeat digit, those odds become 1 in 3.685 million.
[Editor's note: As pointed out by Lottery Post member Brock Lee, the odds of observing 41 consecutive drawings, each with all distinct numbers, is actually much higher: 1 in 1.98 sextillion.]
On Tuesday, Lottery Post reached out to the DC Lottery to alert Lottery officials about the possibility of an askew drawing mechanism. Washington, D.C.'s local lottery games, including DC 5, are conducted via random number generator (RNG).
The following morning, the DC Lottery contacted Lottery Post with confirmation that they identified a coding error with three of their draw games after Lottery Post brought it to their attention.
"A configuration issue caused by a third-party vendor, Smartplay International, Inc., has impacted DC Lottery's draw machines for its DC 3, DC 4, and DC 5 mid-day and evening drawings," DC Lottery Chief of Communications Melissa Davis said in a statement to Lottery Post. "Prior to implementation, the draw systems were third-party certified by Gaming Laboratories International. A coding error prevented the machines from allowing for repeat numbers, such as 111, 222, 311, 229, etc. An investigation determined the issue began on March 31, 2026, during a routine draw machine recertification conducted by the vendor."
The issue essentially means that players who purchased tickets with repeating digits for the past three weeks had no shot at winning a prize in any of the three Pick-style draw games. Luckily, the Lottery has put a temporary solution in place so that future drawings are not impacted.
"As soon as DC Lottery discovered the issue, we immediately contacted Smartplay, who initiated a configuration fix, testing, and quality assurance," Davis continued. "Out of an abundance of caution, DC Lottery is reverting to a backup system to conduct DC 3, DC 4, and DC 5 drawings on April 22, 2026."
The DC Lottery is focusing its efforts on remediating and communicating the issue to players today, Davis explained over the phone. Tomorrow, they anticipate publishing a solution to make it right for players who may have lost out on potential wins.
"We are confident that we have identified the issue and are reviewing the entire process to prevent it from reoccurring," Davis explained. "We deeply regret the error and remain committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity and public trust, and will make this right for our players. Players who purchased tickets for the DC 3, DC 4, or DC 5 mid-day or evening drawings for March 31, 2026 — April 21, 2026, should hold on to their tickets and await further information from DC Lottery."
The same coding error took place with the New Mexico Lottery in 2019, in which combinations with repeat digits were impossible to be drawn in Pick 4. It went on for two weeks before the New Mexico Lottery identified the mistake made by their gaming vendor.
In 2021, another software glitch prevented the New Jersey Lottery's Fast Play Progressive jackpot game from selecting a jackpot winner for two months, meaning players were funding the jackpot with their ticket purchases without having any shot at winning it.
In 2018, a coding error made it so that 100,000 tickets had no chance of winning any prizes ranging from $100 to $1 million in the state's New Year's raffle drawing.
Other instances of computerized drawing mishaps have been well documented by Lottery Post over the years, with some the most notable examples below:
- California Lottery Daily Derby software error denied players a chance to win the grand prize over six months, 2005: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/112810
- Kansas Lottery Pick 3 system glitch picked identical numbers in the same order three days straight, 2005: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/325562
- Tennessee Lottery Cash 3 error prevented duplicate numbers, 2007: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/161364
- Tennessee Lottery required to pay out two sets of winning numbers, 2007: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/162943
- Arizona Lottery Pick 3 computer code prevented 8 and 9 from being drawn in certain positions, 2013: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/265143
- Delaware Lottery Keno glitch draws same winning numbers for six drawings, 2015: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/297350
- Arizona Lottery machine malfunction produced identical numbers for multiple games, 2017: https://www.lotterypost.com/news/315664
Thank You for the update!!!
It is So Sad how we trust computers. Imagine what will happen when self driving cars Malfunction from bad programs who will be responsible. I definitely prefer real ball machines at least they can see a ball is missing not a Ghost 🐋🐋🐋🐋🐋
"According to JADELottery, the odds of the DC 5 drawing producing a singles combination without any repeat digits for 41 consecutive drawings is 1 in 242,413. It's not impossible, but improbable. By the time the game reaches its 50th consecutive drawing without a repeat digit, those odds become 1 in 3.685 million."
that math is not correct. the probability of singles occurring in any one pick 5 drawing is 0.3024. the probability of it happening n times in a row is 0.3024^n. that means the probability of pick 5 singles happening 41 times in a row is 0.3024^41 = 5.5065 x 10^-22. this is from wolframalpha, not chad g petey. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=0.3024%5E41
SmartPlay should be banned from conducting business in the lottery.
Because they failed to do the most important job of fair play, I think it's time to just flat out stop playing the lottery.
Thank YOU for being so diligent!
We've updated the story. Thank you for your contribution!
to the dc lottery's credit, they addressed the issue way faster than i expected. some of those other states let their bad code run a long time before fixing it.
If I'm wrong, I can accept that, however, are we referring to the same thing?
I'm referring to the rate of reoccurrence and appears you're referring to the probability of existence.
I think it goes without saying that this is a failure for the industry, and specifically for SmartPlay.
The reason is that this specific error has happened so many times before, so not only the fact that their systems are allowing these kind of simple mistakes over the course of many years, but the fact that they do not have any monitoring software running that continually examines drawing results for easily-detectable patterns that should be investigated.
Why does SmartPlay not have AI software running every single day that looks for bad patterns in drawings??
In today's environment with easy access to powerful AI engines there is no excuse.
But again at the heart of the matter is that like we've been saying for so many years, lotteries should not be conducting daily drawings with computers. The FACT is that if the lottery (and all the other lotteries that previously made this same mistake) had used traditional ball drawings, this error would never have happened.
There are perhaps many thousands of tickets that were sold with no possibility of winning (and probably thrown away at this point), and many of those tickets would have won prizes if real ball drawings were in place.
All those people playing pairs, triples, quads, and even quints — all with no chance of winning.
Dreadful!
Why do I expect John Cheeks to show up soon and claim he was cheated out of a lot of $.
Glad they fixed it because you can't really win much money playing box unless it's a double, triples, quads or Quints. Feel bad for everybody who threw away majority of the losing tickets. Hopefully DC now starts playing some favorable more popular combinations since they took everybody money for three weeks and won't be liable for all the losing tickets thrown away. Hopefully every state lottery can go to a live drawing. Similar to NC, VA, NY etc
Just wondering... What was their first/immediate reaction when you told them there could be a problem? Were they receptive to it, or did they give you the, "All draws are completely random independent events", line we hear so often before conceding there could be a problem?
Glad you brought it to their attention. Thank you!!
I agree with you 100%. Or atleast stop playing. And tell them to go back to ball draw games/ mechanically draws. And I thought lotterys had an outside source who audited these games? If they do. What happened there?
I have a bit of sympathy about that response that players were getting from the lottery, mainly because the lotteries all get accused by angry gamblers daily of being rigged. So the handful of messages they might have received as a result of this drawing error were likely dwarfed by the daily onslaught of similar messages that do not have a shred of proof. You really can't expect a customer service rep to sort all that out, and the result is a canned response, because most of the time what they replied is true.
The root problem is the computerized drawings. This type of programming error has been shown to be quite common of the years. Someone types one letter wrong (e.g., akin to entering an "N" instead of a "Y" in the "allow duplicates" field) and the entire drawing is corrupted. And because these lottery tech companies obviously have no good monitoring system, the problems persist until enough human beings recognize the problem that it becomes obvious. Sometimes that takes months.
Meanwhile if some tech troll tries to make a false equivalent to ball drawings, they always point to that incident in Pennsylvania several decades ago. But that incident was easily discovered and actual disproves their theory because it was caught so easily.
The solution is ball drawings, but for some odd reason many lottery executives hate real drawings.
I don't get it. If I were a lottery executive, I would look at every ball drawing as a potential marketing event. They apparently look at them as annoyances.