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Virginia Lottery to award partial prizes for faulty gameNews Story
Amounts to about 25% of full prize; some players disappointed Lottery officials announced Thursday that people who had bought misprinted tickets for a recently added game that said they'd won will receive some compensation for the tickets. According to a news release, they reached an agreement with its gaming services provider regarding the problem with the Fast Play Super 7's game. As a result, the Lottery, while not able to pay the expected prizes, is able to give some compensation to pl
Oct 31, 2008, 8:24 pm - Lottery News

Human error caused expensive Va. Lottery mistakeNews Story
New Game Generated More Than 600 Winning Tickets Debra and Raul Bennett are faithful lottery players, though in nearly 15 years of playing they never had won much more than pocket money. So on Sunday, when the retired Hampton, Va., couple realized they had a winning ticket from the Virginia Lottery's brand-new Fast Play Super 7s game, they were ecstatic. Plans for spending the $7,777 the game's top prize came fast and furious. But when the Bennetts went to the Hampton Virginia Lottery o
Oct 22, 2008, 6:44 pm - Lottery News

Virginia winners may have to pay for Lottery's mistakeNews Story
Sometimes lotto luck lies underneath the surface of a scratch-off ticket. Sometimes it lies in the bounce of a ball. And sometimes it lies with the Virginia attorney general's office. Hundreds of players thought they had struck gold when lottery terminals errantly spit out tickets that appeared to have won them as much as $7,777. Turns out it was a computer programming error, not lady luck. Now the state's top lawyers will consult with the Virginia Lottery to decide whether the players get
Oct 21, 2008, 8:33 am - Lottery News

Kansas Lottery officials mull GTECH systems failureNews Story
Kansas Lottery officials already had more than their hands full with the selection of gaming license applicants for their four casinos so they really didn't need another problem. But, there it is: a casino data systems failure from GTECH, the Providence-RI-based firm that manages the state's lottery activities. It was defective software, pure and simple, said Ed Van Petten, lottery executive director, in describing the systems failure. GTECH, a former publicly-traded American company, was
Jul 15, 2008, 11:00 pm - Lottery News

Software error stalls validation of some winning D.C. lottery ticketsNews Story
Glitch delayed winnings for several dozen ticketholders; cause still sought A mysterious software bug in 17 lottery machines used by the D.C. Lottery and Charitable Games Control Board in Washington left several dozen winning instant ticketholders unable to immediately cash their prize tickets last week. The problem, according to Jay Young, chief operating officer of the lottery board, was tracked to the proprietary software that validates instant tickets with winning numbers, but the exac
May 9, 2008, 8:46 am - Lottery News

Tennessee Lottery computerized drawings under suspicion againNews Story
Lottery draws same numbers 3 days in a row; same thing happened last month When will the Tenn. Lottery dump the computer draws? Seven was a lucky number for Tennessee lottery players last week. A very, very, very lucky number. For three consecutive days, the winning ticket in the Cash 3 drawing was some combination of two sevens and a zero. Thursday, the winning Cash 3 number at midday was 0-7-7. Friday, the winning midday number was 7-0-7. And Saturday evening, the winning number was a
Apr 8, 2008, 8:26 pm - Lottery News

Tennessee Lottery a step closer to restoring real drawingsNews Story
A Tennessee House panel has advanced a proposal to require the state lottery to abandon computerized drawings for its games. House Minority Leader Jason Mumpower, a Bristol Republican, says he sponsored the manual drawings measure in response to a loss in consumer confidence following a computer programming error last year. The glitch prevented duplicate numbers to be drawn for nearly a month. Lottery officials estimate it would cost about $5 million a year to return to drawing numbered
Apr 2, 2008, 11:02 pm - Lottery News

Tenn. lawmakers want to force lottery to drop computer drawsNews Story
There is new discussion in the Tennessee Legislature about the possibility of the state lottery going back to using ping-pong balls to select the Cash 3 and Cash 4 winners. In 2007, a computer programming error prevented anyone who played repeated digits, such as two fives in a row, from winning. The error was discovered Aug. 20 when lottery officials contacted the system designer, Smartplay, about their concerns. The lottery is asking Smartplay, and the company that certified the syste
Mar 26, 2008, 9:08 pm - Lottery News

Tenn. Lottery audit: players spent $2 million on worthless ticketsNews Story
Lottery responded too slowly; problem fixed 10 minutes after finding it The Tennessee Lottery made a series of missteps and oversights after a software glitch began generating faulty winning numbers last year, and players bought about $2 million worth of unwinnable tickets before the error was found, according to a state audit. The sweeping audit from state Comptroller John G. Morgan reviewed the entire episode between July 28 and Aug. 20, when a programming glitch caused no duplicate digi
Mar 19, 2008, 10:48 am - Lottery News

N.J. lottery midday draws held late, not televisedNews Story
The New Jersey Lottery's computer system is back on-line, after being down for about 3½ hours this afternoon, officials said. The disruption in service, which shut down Lottery machines throughout the state and caused a delay in the drawing of the Satuday midday numbers, was blamed on high winds and heavy rains that hit the state today. Lottery machines went down about 12:30 p.m. Service was restored shortly before 4 p.m., said Dominick DeMarco, a spokesman for the Lottery Commissio
Mar 8, 2008, 5:14 pm - Lottery News