I hear the sound of the first shoe dropping!

Mark my words, the Tennessee Lottery will not learn anything from this. Remember when the same number came up three times in a row in the Kansas Pick 3, a billion to one occurance, or when Daily Derby in CA had it's own flaw. They didn't learn anything because they are still drawn with the same flawed technology. I can't see any reason the situation here in Tennessee will be any different. 

I hope I'm wrong about this, but I probably will be right. 

When I was a kid, my calculator could do better random numbers.  Seed cosine based on time to nanosecond of drawing individual balls. I still like the balls. Keep them honest. Must be a money thing for the lottery officials. If I was a programmer, I would put in a backdoor or a bomb. Win me a lottery the old fashioned way, steal it.

I am so glad I still have my tickets.  a 2 fer isn't bad.  I am going to enjoy this..(I think). The draws should be mostly doubles coming up.

Sadly, I agree.  There is a Forest Gump saying that comes to mind.

"The lottery announced they would try to fix any problems caused by the outside consultant by hiring another consultant".

  Why are we not surprised  by this ?

This is exactly what we all feared when Tenn went to this system and lo and behold it happened.

The best way to fix this is to stop playing. See if that get's Rebeccas attention.

OOO, oooo; stupid is as stupid does.Ping pong balls are much nicer.

I agree, but I don't think it was even their RNG.  It was just an incredibly BAD programming error, which should have EASILY been caught.  Obviously, the Tennessee Lottery did NOT do any semblance of due diligence on the new draw system, or it would have been caught, as the article states.

I'll bet that the RNG did not spit out any doubles or triples because it was setup exactly like the Pick 5 game, in which it is not allowed to draw duplicates.  So all they did is change the possible numbers that could be drawn, and did not alter the rules to allow duplicates.

This is absolutely horrendous.  The CEO is directly responsible for this, as that's where the buck stops.  Yet she tries to cast the blame on a contractor, rather than admitting that the lottery did not do the proper due diligence.

I am outraged, and I don't even live there.  I can't imagine what you Tennesseeans must feel like.  You have all been repeatedly slapped in the face, while the lottery tries to convince you that someone else is at fault.

 hopefully this will cause more people to join the boycott of the RNG games here until they lose enough money to go back to balls.

I Don't Like It Either! I like to witness the drawing in real time; mechanical, not computerized. Computerized drawings..... anything can happen. When you got a huge Jackpot up for grabs, people are going to be P/O! They're NOT going to be happy campers!

To say the least

Here in Michigan, the 3 digit game, and 4 digit game are still mechanical. But the Keno, Fantasy 5, and Classic Lotto 47.... I'm not so sure.

Everytime I looked at the drawings on tv @ 7:29pm here in MI, and after the 3 & 4 digit games were drawn all the person says is " And the rest of the winning numbers are NOW, on your screen". And then they show the numbers. That's It!! Good Nite! and Good Luck!

They don't show how they were drawn (like they use to, years ago, with other lotto games by the mechanical rotating balls dropping into the different slots of the machine.

A progammer can do anything. And when you have a team, look out! 

   I've said it before, stop buying lottery tickets and see how quick they have a change of heart about computerized drawings. Thats the government spirit, spend more money to an outside consultant...>>>>>>?? I really feel sorry for the people of Tenn...!

To the Tennessee Lottery:

Prove to me beyond the shadow of the doubt that you didn't do this on purpose and only regret getting caught. Any references to education will discredit your argument in full.

I'd wait to hear your response but I have better things to do with my time than listen to your silence.

Wow....that is all I can say....wow

Brad

One of the stories,that I had read on this site about another state changing earlier this year, claimed cost effectiveness of the computer system over the ping pong ball method.  I guess if they can eliminate another job and replace it with computers that don't need food, clothing or medical insurance, then the  computer IS cost effective--until using a computer draw becomes a liability (i.e.--till TN citizens stop playing the P3 and P4 games)

PS Jeffrey--Steal one for me while you're at it. 

"Lottery throws all blame on a contractor; players bare the brunt" 

bare" the brunt??   . 

"BEAR"

Being as other jurisdictions already use computerized drawings for Pick 3 and Pick 4 games, how in the world can a contractor who is being paid good money screw programming up so badly? Absolutely incredible. It's not as if they were creating or even had to create a new program, and it isn't rocket science.

I've heard it before and I'll say it here, never underestimate the human capacity for utter stupidity.

Me, I wish that the Tx lottery had either only singles or doubles, but not both, such as Tn did, only all doubles would be best.

Too bad that you all there didn't know this in advace, 270 straight combos already eliminated and 90 boxed.

At 900 to 1 online, you could had made at least $180 per each and every draw, without having to use any filtering of your own.

$180 X 15 draws = $ 2,700. Not too bad, you would of course had to play all the straight singles.

Risk free, that is untill the doubles came out, I wonder if there was any advance warning of the state fixing the RNG problem.

 225 Midday Tuesday

 211 Evening Tuesday

Those 2 doubles show that those 2 draws were "Fixed" or "Doctored" as you might call them, because the doubles came out as soon as the RNG's were "Fixed" to show to everybody right away that now doubles  come out.

So those 2 draws were unfair to players who played singles.

As doubles and much less 2 of them should not had come out so soon after the "Fix"

That is conclusive PROOF of how easily RNG draws can be tampered with or "Faked"

As they made those 2 doubles come out on DEMAND as soon as they wanted them to come out for 2 particular draws at 2 particular times.

That goes to show you just how much the state lotteries and their drawings can be trusted, drawings are so easily tampered with.

And Todd  is very likely right about that particular programming error, they could had chosen any particular single to come out for any particular drawing, but not any doubles at all.

I guess that nobody else caugh on this. 

--------------

I have said this before:

State lotteries should not hold their own drawings. 

Lantern they were flooded with calls and emails about the fact that there were no doubles

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

quote: We have had some other inquiries about the lack of double digit winning numbers, so we had our security staff run several random test draws, and double digits were drawn.

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In other threads about this i replied that this was a good time to take advantage of their mishap.
On a sad note if only i had an on line account with the betting place then i might have made a killing. After the first 5 or 6 draws when they went computerized light bulbs went off in my head.

First of all, It was foolish to bring it to their attention, it could had gone on very much longer without the lottery people knowing about it, imagine having only singles to play, 120 boxed singles instead of 220 boxed numbers, they were already filtering 90 boxed combos free for you or 270 straight ones.

Who wanted this gold mine to stop and Why?

-----------------

So as you point out, they run several drawings untill the doubles came out and chose them as winning numbers for those 2 drawings, What is there to stop them from doing this any time that they want to, in order to get either singles or doubles as they might want to, or even winning numbers that few people bet on?

-----------

Pretests stink.

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I know what you mean! A gold mine kind of.

Buy 120 combos and get paid 150 dollars, make $30 per each draw played, 2 times a day for more than 20 days.

$60 times 15 = $900 playing boxed, in less than 1 month of playing.

I could had filtered the 120 combos to no more 60, so:

$150 - 60 = $90 x 2 draws a day = $180 per day X 15 days = $2,700 profit playing boxed online for 15 days.

But I don't play the lottery right now, not with the state nor online. 

I'm glad I live close to Kentucky. Tennessee really pissed me off with this changing over to computers to draw the numbers then when they had this flaw and I sent this email.

I would like to know if there is a problem with the computer that draws the lottery numbers? Every since you(Tennessee Lottery) have switched the way the numbers are chosen there hasn't been a double digit come out in ANY draw. I know that the drawings are supposed to be random but it is highly unlikely that no double would fall in any draw in 18 days.

Then they sent me this reply.

Thank you for playing the Tennessee Lottery and for your comments.
The security and integrity of our games is of utmost importance and this greatly impacted our decision to go to these type drawings. The Tennessee Lottery goes to extreme measures to protect the integrity of its games in order to maximize dollars for education in the state.
For any one drawing, each of the available combinations of numbers has the same likelihood of being selected. Additionally, numbers selected in any one drawing has no relationship to a future or past drawing, since each drawing is a unique, separate and distinct occurrence.
We have had some other inquiries about the lack of double digit winning numbers, so we had our security staff run several random test draws, and double digits were drawn.

Then today they want to say this.

"Once the issue was pinpointed, it was corrected immediately," said Rebecca Hargrove, President and CEO of the Tennessee Lottery. "The Tennessee Lottery sincerely regrets what happened and wants to reassure our players and everyone in Tennessee that the drawings have been rectified and we will continue to move forward with our mission to maximize dollars for education."

I don't know how the RNG drawings work but I do wonder how it took them 3 weeks to determine there was a problem and I noticed it after a week. Maybe it took 3 weeks worth of phone calls and emails for them to see there was a problem, or they were doing as they said, making as money as they could for education. I still say boycott TN lottery and if you don't want to, then play online so the state doesn't get the money.

the tennessee lottery is a joke now.

With no doubles or triples, it looks like they were picking 3 numbers from a single group of 10 for the pick3 game and 4 numbers from a single group of 10 for the pick4 game.  Some one got confused when they put the parameters into the RNG 

That means the odds of picking the winning pick3 straight number was 1:120 and a box hit was 1:20  and the odds of a straight in the pick4 was 1:210 and for a 24 way box hit was 1:9. 

I hope the smarter people in Tennessee were making some money during those few days.  I suspect some of them were and that was the reason they caught the mistake.  That doesn't speak well for the people running the lottery if they didn't catch their mistake before they installed the system.

...exactly why I don't get too worked up about RNGs. Yeah they're rigged, but so is everything else gov't sticks its dirty, no-bid mitts on. As I wrote in another thread on TN (before they went RNG) I just want to catch the flaw. *twirls moustache*

This is a great point.

Either the Tennessee Lottery checked the wrong draw computer, or they are lying.  Which do you think it is?

I personally think it's a strong possibility that the webmaster (or whoever put that e-mail together) made it up, becasue they couldn't conceive of an error in the system.

This sort of reminds me of a comment made in the movie Armageddon by Steve Buscemi

"You know we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?"

And they will quickly bury and deny this. And they will continue with the RNG and pretend nothing is wrong. Keyword: PRETEND

Sadly, this won't affect the diehards. They'll still dump their money in it.

One other thing I thought of:

I thought the draw computers were supposed to be locked up, with no access from anyone other than the person who presses the button to generate the results?  That's what they lead people to believe.

But apparently that's not the case, because some person ran a test on the draw computer, according to their e-mail (before the programming error was finally caught).

So I guess people DO have access to the machines.

I really hope everyone is "getting" this.  All those statements about the computers being so safe is BS.  I hope everyone can see that it is not impossible to make the computers do what you want, and that somebody could change the way the numbers get drawn.

This mess is a clear example of why I created the Petition for True Lottery Drawings 3 years ago.  This is the legacy of computerized drawings:  Bugs, cover-ups, sleight-of-hand, deception, and more.

Anyone who has followed my posts knows full-well that I am no conspiracy theorist.  These are not sensational ideas, these are all real, and if you're not up-in-arms about computerized drawings, you should think again.

   Once the Tennessee Lottery realizes that nothing can be done to stop them from manipulating their games, they'll begin cheating players openly, with no apologies, like the Hoosier Lottery does now.

   LosingJeff and I have PROVEN, beyond ANY doubt, that switching to an electronic drawing format DOES NOT save a lottery ANY money. Since details of our investigation appeared in two newspaper articles, state lotteries no longer use the "money-saving" ploy. Instead, they now espouse "keeping up with industry standards" to justify the switch.

   In addition, deception is MUCH easier to detect in a mechanical drawing, and it doesn't take a programmer to find it. When a mechanical drawing is rigged, it's visible to the naked eye; when an electronic drawing is rigged, we may never know about it, and we're not informed until AFTER the fact, if we're informed at all. The problem is, when they do admit something is wrong, it's always a "programming error," and it's always someone else's fault. The same explanation always follows: "The error has been rectified. It was a million-to-one shot that this could even happen once, but we're 100% certain that it will never happen again. After all, we have integrity, so you can be assured that we'll be here to take your money for years to come."

   I guess we'll have to wait until a few more states convert to computerized drawings. Once the scourge spreads to those players who are currently unaffected by the evil machines, maybe, just maybe, we'll get enough signatures to take the petition to Congress.  

What a joke! 

We tested it and got doubles.  Opps...it turns out the programmer made a mistake and programmed the computer so that it couldn't produce doubles.  Oops again...the security person who checked our infalable program missed the programming error.  OK..now we fixed the problem that we said could never happen in the first place by hiring another programmer from the same company that made the mistake in the first place.  

Presumably they are hiring another security expert from the same company who missed the mistake in the first place to check the new and improved infalable program.   

This whole Tennessee mess amounts to nothing more than the Hoosierization of the Tennesse Lottery.

Jim 

3 Strikes, You're OUT!

I wonder if there are certain Hot Trax combinations that can't win as well...

Just a point about programming; if no one is watching the watcher watching the programmer, anything can happen.

     Seventy per cent of the players purchase QP's.  While this trend continues, any lottory will do whatever they want and the public can kiss their glass.

     In the years prior to Tennessee getting a lottory, I said often that Tennessee will get a lottory as soon as the politicians figure a way to skim money off the top.  By going to RNG they have found the way.  Tennessee has shown for all the world to see that RNG numbers can be rigged; there is no security; take it or leave it.  As for me, I am leaving it but my moving on will not affect the 70% that use QP.   Most player do not know how or when or where numbers are drawn; they just ckeck the morning papers to see if they won.  The Tennessee lottory knows this and acts accordingly. 

     I will go so far as to say that any state that uses a computer to generate winning numbers maintains the same attitude and gives the "winnings" to the "right" people.