In order to fully appreciate LosingJeff's story, it's important to remember that Indiana has no mandated liability limits for any of their online games. To my knowledge, every other state lottery has them.
Instead, the Hoosier Lottery prefers to actively track player selections as they're being sold, so they can cut off a number any time their sales for that number approach $600.00 on any given day. This fixes the upper limit of their payouts for the Pick-3 at no more than $300k. They call this "Fiscal Responsibility," as it ensures that they'll never "have to pay out more than they took in."
Before anyone comes back with the tired argument that all states track the numbers, let me remind you that all states didn't download their RNG from a public site on the internet, as the Hoosier Lottery did, and also that all states don't operate behind a curtain of total secrecy, as the Hoosier Lottery does.
It is mathematically impossible to obtain payouts as consistently low as those enjoyed by the Hoosier Lottery without actively engineering them. It's a mathematical phenomenon that the Hoosier Lotto 6/48 game would reach a level of $28M on two separate occasions, since it doesn't roll over until the third draw with no winner, and the rollovers are limited to $500k, regardless of ticket sales. As I write this, the current jackpot level of the Hoosier Lotto is $25M, so it appears that LosingJeff's prediction of yet another impossible $28M jackpot will come to pass. It takes 57 consecutive drawings without a winner to reach this level.
They constantly whine that nobody's buying tickets, and they claim that's the reason for their low payouts, but then they boast of record sales in their annual reports. When they award grants to civic organizations, such as the Mentone Lions Club, they make grand announcements in the press so that we'll know how civic-minded and generous they are. Unfortunately, they don't bother to publish the fact that they didn't actually send the check. Consequently, this hampers the fund-raising efforts of these organizations, as people tend to give much less when they read that the entity has just received fifty thousand dollars or more.
So quad 8's didn't hit last night. My guess is that the Hoosier Lottery noticed the same pattern LosingJeff saw when they learned that people were buying tickets for that number. I would also surmise that their sales for that number exceeded $600 before they noticed it. Of course, it could be that quad 8's just didn't come up, and everyone who bought a ticket on that number simply guessed wrong. I'd be more willing to accept that if I didn't have the evidence I have.
The secrecy issues, the algorhithm they call an RNG, which Jack Ross admitted was altered by Hoosier Lottery programmers after certification by Gaming Labs, their constant refusal to release public information and specific sales data, their consistent and appallingly low payouts, the hudreds of millions of dollars that simply vanish into thin air each year, and everything else LosingJeff and I have uncovered about this crooked agency and their apparent protector, the statehouse, tends to make me more than a little suspicious. They don't even post their winning numbers or payouts until several (many) hours after the draw. The midday drawing usually posts around 9pm, and the evening draw comes out at three or four in the morning.
Finally, I'd like to point out that LosingJeff DID stop playing Hoosier Lottery games. Last night was a fluke; a meager attempt to exploit their crooked system and get some of his money back. To his credit, he only spent a dollar, or would have, if the terminal had printed his ticket. Had quad eights hit last night, regardless of whether LosingJeff bought his ticket, it would have strengthened our evidence against them.
The Hoosier Lottery is Indiana's Area 51 and Bermuda Triangle rolled into one secret and mysterious agency which, apparently, is being run by Harry Potter and his friends.