EXCLUSIVE: Weeks-long computerized draw error prevented many DC Lottery tickets from winning a prize

Comment #42

RichW — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:38:41 GMT

The coding error blocking repeat digits like 111 or 229 in DC 3, 4, and 5 draws from March 31 to April 21 wiped out roughly 27% of combos in DC 3 alone (since 10^3=1,000 total minus 720 unique-digit ones), which is why sharp LP folks caught the stats anomaly so fast. Kudos to DC Lottery for owning it and switching to backups quickly, but holding tickets means they're likely cooking up a fair remediation, maybe prorated payouts based on odds adjustment. Ball draws aren't foolproof either (machine... [ More ]

Comment #41

Hermanus104 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 04:10:49 GMT

With regard to the last paragraph, I remember watching the DC Lottery drawings when they used balls. It was much more entertaining the first time I saw the computerized drawing on TV, I stopped watching the drawings on TV. Even though I live in a RNG lottery state, I go onto the Texas Lottery website every once in a while to watch their live drawings.

Comment #40

Artist77 — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 01:04:51 GMT

I am impressed with the people who monitor these drawings and caught it. I assumed it was just sore losers until the stats of this happening were calculated..

LP really serves as a watchdog group.

Comment #39

JustMaybe — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:20:15 GMT

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.

I believe this is why two months down the life we don't have a second prize Millionaire For Life winner when we are having them on both PB and MM frequently.

Comment #38

play4shekels — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:16:50 GMT

You guys really dont get it! Those numbers weren't sold out because so many players caught on ... it's because it was planned! Where else can you get a 60% return on your investment twice a day??? Someone with dee-e-e-e-p pockets was in on this one. Wonder if they were laundering their Somalian Daycare profits? I hope that LP will follow up and tell us where all those tickets were purchased (and how many). And no Todd, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Just dont trust RNGs or any gambling that give... [ More ]

Comment #37

Brock Lee — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 22:02:01 GMT

nobody was going to make good money out of it because too many players figured it out, making the singles sell out too quickly.

Comment #36

Moneytowin — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:37:26 GMT

Not necessarily if you bet more on the single then you will win more singles prizes are just half the fraction of the double so if you play the extra amount you can still take home the same from a double or tripple but of course most not experience players like they life just chasing doubles and pairs and triples but the goal should be to get a win if singles are hot then play them dont lose money chasing thats not coming i can see if it was only 10 doubled or tripples but they have so many trip... [ More ]

Comment #35

BlackYuKonGirl — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:00:07 GMT

Well there it is! The payout is lower if folks catch a single hit vs a double or triple. This may not be a mistake at all but rather controlled.

Comment #34

Moneytowin — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:53:32 GMT

This is B#ll snip why did someone have to open thier mouths you know how much money you could have made just playing all singles its impossible to cover all of both but if someone played on bet any sport they could of ran it up in got paid now no one cant do that because silly people have to mess up a good thing i was going to put some money from pay day on them singles

This post has been automatically changed by the Lottery Post computer system to remove inappropriate content and/or spam.

Comment #33

meta19 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:38:45 GMT

Where is the petition for all lotteries to be audited periodically?This needs to be national.

Comment #32

meta19 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:27:39 GMT

Eddie Tipton audits the lottery

Comment #31

meta19 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:23:47 GMT

Scandal in DC?Nahhhhhh

Comment #30

Mobile Merchant — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:01:23 GMT

Forgot to tag you in response to your prior comment so take a look at my rant in this thread Just keeping STITH real

Comment #29

Mobile Merchant — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:55:51 GMT

Oooh...you noticing those daily games too.

I thought I was the only one seeing those anomolies in the games here in Ontario.

Surprise, surprise. Glad you're seeing it too!

Quick back story: I do a lot of paper betting and practicing for the Pick 2 games. Decided to do a back testing w/o tracking to see how often double digits (ex 11 55 88) hit over a specific period of time vs single digit pairs.

And to my surprise/not surprise, for a consecutive 40 draws - 20 days [March 11,... [ More ]

Comment #28

Artist77 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:56:29 GMT

The DC government is well known for being very incompetent across the board and that is one of the reasons it cannot get statehood. A one traffic light town is more competent.

A guy in my office was on DC unemployment comp for a month or two before he worked for my employer and got a threatening letter stating that he owed them $40 k. Lol. He tried a million ways to tell them that he received a few thousand in benefits but every rep there did not care. He had to bring in an attorney to meet... [ More ]

Comment #27

tdups — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:54:44 GMT

Do the OLG next.. pick 3 and 4

I think their machines have a no win coding error too

Comment #26

JADELottery — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:08:32 GMT

As we pointed out in the DC 5 Lottery needs to be audited immediately. The same thing that happened to Tennessee in 2007 Thread - https://www.lotterypost.com/thread/358919/8128587

This event just happened to occur at the same time as a promotion going on in April.

Coincidence

Comment #25

Think — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:28:55 GMT

This does make you wonder what else is going on at the DC Lottery that hasn't been discovered yet.

DC Lottery - Deliberately Crooked Lottery?

Definitely Crooked Lottery

Comment #24

Stat$talker — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:55:40 GMT

Hmmm, imagine that: a lottery selling worthless tickets.

I' ve been saying for years now, that some drawing results don't agree with it's Data.. especially in Ga. LOz have some yet undisclosed way of rigging even mechanical ball drawings,... So the Math says...

Good to see I'm not the only one calling out their BS ... Thanks to ALL for the Great work..

Comment #23

lottofan21 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:11:12 GMT

We need the ball machine to be examined in NC. We recently had 9 consecutive doubles drawn and 14/16 overall. What are the odds of that? Seems unlikely to me

Comment #22

ayenowitall — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:57:29 GMT

Hmmm, imagine that: a lottery selling worthless tickets.

Comment #21

Tucker Black — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:40:00 GMT

I'm amazed they didn't test this software.

Comment #20

DELotteryPlyr — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:16:34 GMT

YES they do! But also they see them (ball drawings) as a added EXPENSE that they can cut. In todays business world people get a bonus when they find ways to CUT costs. Marketing for lotteries seems to have been cut across the board. They just keep creating more expensive games (especially scratch offs) just putting out a press release for marketing. Until sales drop they will not go back to ball drawings.

Thanks again for doing what you do in contacting them!

How long would this have g... [ More ]

Comment #19

Keystone — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:10:07 GMT

Jade Lottery, ty for discovering the coding error..............hope you get a big win

Comment #18

lakerben — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 01:46:49 GMT

We got refunded..

Comment #17

Brock Lee — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 01:10:15 GMT

dc lottery is one of those that limits how many of each combo can be sold, so if you don't manage to buy all the singles it's not risk free. and since so many people figured out they had a problem with the drawings, the singles were selling out fast.

Comment #16

Newkids06 — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:45:58 GMT

It was but it wasn't so in state u spend $252 and get back $425. Online u spend $252 and get back $750 but online numbers were sold out from the night before. Same in store with many of the numbers so you could be stuck out there not having every combination. Even b.s #'s sold out 24679. Many of us couldn't even take advantage you hadnumbers sold out 3-4 draws in advance. You only see that with quads and quints and 12345 not 47836 life wtf is that number being sold out.

Comment #15

Tucker Black — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:04:14 GMT

An all-singles Pick 5 drawing has a huge player advantage. Why didn't you guys play it and say nothing and profit as long as possible? Let them figure it out when their cheaper RNG system actually costs them money instead of saving money.

Comment #14

Todd — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:41:54 GMT

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... [ More ]

Comment #13

Justing618 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:36:25 GMT

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

Comment #12

grwurston — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:28:04 GMT

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?

This is just one more example why all lotteries should go back to mechanical ball drawings. The RNG's may be faster and cheaper for them to use, but players doubting the game's integrity is not good for their business.... [ More ]

Comment #11

Newkids06 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:48:50 GMT

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

Comment #10

Artist77 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:20:42 GMT

Why do I expect John Cheeks to show up soon and claim he was cheated out of a lot of $.

Comment #9

Todd — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:56:12 GMT

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

Comment #8

JADELottery — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:55:27 GMT

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.

Comment #7

Brock Lee — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:50:02 GMT

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.

Comment #6

Kate — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:30:17 GMT

We've updated the story. Thank you for your contribution

Comment #5

Kate — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:29:34 GMT

Thank YOU for being so diligent

Comment #4

Lotologist — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:19:01 GMT

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.

Comment #3

Brock Lee — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:04:17 GMT

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 pro... [ More ]

Comment #2

JoeBigLotto — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:56:56 GMT

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

Comment #1

JADELottery — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:54:31 GMT

Thank You for the update

EXCLUSIVE: Weeks-long computerized draw error prevented many DC Lottery tickets from winning a prize

Lottery Post — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:47:53 GMT

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