There is only one sure-fire method of correctly predicting a Pick-4 number in the Hoosier Lottery daily games: after carefully selecting your numbers, write them down on a piece of paper and go to bed. In the morning, go to your bank and deposit $20.00, or an amount equal to what you normally spend on Pick-4 tickets each day. Now you're at least twenty bucks ahead of the game, and you'll stay ahead as long as you continue to make your daily deposits, and provided you don't actually buy any tickets.
I realize how ridiculous this sounds, but try it yourself. It's astonishing how often you can predict Indiana's number when playing on paper. If you bet on that number, though, you're taking yourself right out of the game.
I'm currently collecting payout vs. sales information from various states with populations similar to that of Indiana. I don't have all the results yet, but if what I have so far is in any way indicative of the remaining responses, I will finally be able to prove that something is very, very wrong with this game. For example: Massachusetts has less than half the population of Indiana. Yet, last year they paid out $371.6M to winners of their parimutuel Pick-4 evening game, against sales of about $600M. That works out to roughly $1.018M per day they paid out to winners. So far, I have been unable to obtain sales figures from Indiana, and I can only get limited information on their daily payouts from their website, but here are some recent figures for our Pick-4 evening game:
February 20, 2004: Winners: 30 Payout: $ 7,600.00 (Yes, that's all)
February 21, 2004: Winners: 121 Payout: $53,220.00
February 22, 2004: Winners: 26 Payout: $ 7,780.00 (Yep; not a typo)
February 23, 2004: Winners: 57 Payout: $40,080.00
February 24, 2004: Winners: 33 Payout: $13,110.00
February 25, 2004: Winners: 153 Payout: $28,690.00
February 26, 2004: Winners: 47 Payout: $23,120.00
February 27, 2004: Winners: 61 Payout: $19,210.00
That's a total payout of $192,810.00 over eight days, or an average of $24,101.00 per day. I noticed signs posted at a retailer today saying, "Last week, the Hoosier Lottery paid out over $1.7M dollars to winners in Indiana's online games!" This figure presumably takes into account their midday and evening daily games, their Pick-5, the Hoosier Lotto and Powerball, so the remaining one million, five hundred seven thousand dollars would be divided, somehow, between those games. Maybe it's just me, but this doesn't seem like something any lottery commission ought to be bragging about.
This is the situation LosingJeff and I, apparently, are facing alone. I have yet to find any other Indiana players (as opposed to forecasters, predictors and prognosticators) on this forum or any other. If you are out there, don't you think it's time you spoke up????
Pick-4_Master, Goose, Hypersoniq, Bobp, and anyone else who would care to contribute, may I hear your thoughts, please?
Good luck to all...
Jim
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