Ball drawings coming back to Indiana!

I haven't posted anything in a while, as I've been in the process of moving. But one tidbit has caught my eye that needs to be said and it's pretty good news. The Hoosier (Indiana) Lottery recently put multi-state draws back on Indianapolis Fox affiliate WXIN. But the announcement page also had a very important line there as well, which reads:

"Plus, live Daily 3 and Daily 4 drawings will be coming this fall!".

Now when I first read that, I thought they meant the cartoon drawings that Tennessee and Minnesota have. Indiana has had computerized drawings for several years now. However one line the procurement presentation (.pdf file) confirms what is very good news:

"Drawing equipment (machines, numbered ball sets, random number generator, etc.) for conducting the Daily 3 and Daily 4 draws."

It does mention a random number generator, but that is probably to be used for selecting the aforementioned machines and ball sets; and it appears that the other games (Hoosier Lotto, for example) will remain computerized for the time being. But this is fantastic news for players in Indiana, whose computerized draws were once a popular gripe on Lottery Post (more so than other RNG states). It's also good for players everywhere else. This is the first time ever that a lottery has switched back to balls after going computerized; and this could mark a precedent for other computerized draws to change back to balls, as well.

Florida (Lottery) Turns 25: Nostalgia Time!



Courtesy: floridamemory.com

What got me to be so fascinated with the lottery world? Fascinated enough to actually to go through to the trouble to actually start a blog. Like most people's personal fascinations, this goes back to my early childhood. So when I visited the Florida Lottery's website and saw their 25th anniversary "festivities" and the "revival" of their first instant game Millionaire, I couldn't help think of my memories of the Florida Lottery's early years, which closely paralelled my early years.

I grew up outside Tampa; and from the time Florida's Lotto started up, it was a weekly tradition for my dad to go to the local Presto store and buy 5 Lotto tickets. And back in those days, you would literally get 5 singular tickets, you didn't get one ticket with several lines like you do now. It may have been a little inconvenient, but they had a series of some pretty cool art on the head of ticket. I've seen old Minnesota and Pennsylvania tickets with something similar, as they used the same model of lottery computer. But they never looked as cool as the pictures on Florida's tickets. Sadly though, this is probably something we'll never see on lottery tickets again.



Courtesy: VintageGameWorld.com

But there's one thing that would really drive the lottery player of today crazy. For the first couple of years of Florida Lotto, there was no quick pick. You came up with your own six numbers, or you didn't play. The strange thing is, this wasn't a common thing even then. By the time Florida got it's computerized games in 1988, most other states had quick pick. Florida wouldn't get it until 1990. So what did my dad do to pick his numbers? He got out the Rack-O game. This was a game where you had to put numbered cards in a sequence; or something like that, I never played it. But my dad used it to pick numbers by shuffling the cards (the ones numbered 1-49, anyway), and just drawing them one at a time, marking the number on the play slip. Sound fun? Well, it may have been slightly more engaging than a quick pick; but my dad was still pretty glad when quick pick came along.

Courtesy: floridamemory.com

It was hard not to notice the Florida Lottery's presence. There were Lotto billboards everywhere, with manual numbers that were changed without fail every Sunday morning (and Thursday morning after the second draw was addded). That was one of many touches that the first lottery director, Rebecca Paul, put on the new venture. She knew how to give a lottery charm, and did an equally good job of it when she started Georgia's lottery.

But my fondest memory of the Florida Lottery was the drawings! Watching the balls bouncing around was one of the coolest things my pre-pubecent eyes had ever seen. Bouncing here and there, and then one pops up, followed by another, and then another. My dad would sit there, hoping the numbers on the balls matched the ones on his tickets. I didn't have a ticket, nor would I for nearly two decades, but I enjoyed that one minute as much as anybody. So much so, I even made a point to watch the Illinois drawings on WGN. I didn't get to watch these very often though, as they aired just before the late news (on WTVT, channel 13, back when they were a CBS affiliate). And you can't let a small child stay up until 11 when he has kindergarten in the morning.

 

Florida is still one of the better lotteries out there; though after Rebecca Paul left, the lottery became very conservative in their approach compared to other large state's lotteries. Lotto was one of the biggest games in the country for several more years, but the rest of the lottery became very stale. The lottery remained one of the most conservative lotteries up until the mid-2000s, but in recent years Florida's been one of the more aggressive in terms of offering innovative games. However, they are still very wary of multi-state games. They were the last state lottery to not have a multi-state game until they joined Powerball in 2009. And they are still the only lottery to not offer Mega Millions, and they have no plans to join up to this point.



"New" Game in Illinois

It's been almost a quarter century since the Illinois Lottery has introduced a new game. Granted, Lotto has been changed a few times since then. Little Lotto's gameplay has not only changed, but so has it's name (beginning as Cash 5, and now called Lucky Day Lotto). But it hasn't been since 1988, when the afforementioned Cash 5/et al game was launched, that Illinois has introduced an entirely new game.

That changed Sunday with the introduction of My3. To play, one must select a three-digit number between 000 and 999. If that sounds familiar, that's because they didn't actually introduce a actual new game, they just added another Pick 3! Granted, it's a sort of "beginner's" version of Pick 3, but why did they have to create a whole new product? They could have just as easily made "beginner's" play slips for Pick 3, and added a new play option to provide multiple prize levels. By the way, I completely forgot about the multiple prize levels in My3.

Apparently they can call this a "new" game because there are multiple prize levels: matching all 3 in exact order wins $200 on a $1 play, matching any 2 in order wins $4. If you match all 3 in a jumbled order, you win $40; unless your number has repeating digits, then you win $100. But that begs the question: what happens if one picks all of one digit (i.e. 000, 777)? Does the player win both the exact and repeating prize, or just the exact order prize?

If you're confused, that just goes to show what a failure of marketing this is. If this was added as a new "ez-win" option to Pick 3, I'd give it a solid B+. But a whole new product? I guess Northstar (the private firm running the lottery) had that idea of adding this to Pick 3, and then they realized "Hey, we haven't introduced a new game since 1988; let's just make this it's own game." There was a lot of speculation on Lottery Post that the new game would be 5-digit game like PA's Quinto. And as bad as that game would have been, it still would have made more sense to add than this: what essentially amounts to another Pick 3. Pointless.

New game idea, the first of (hopefully) many.

Introducing the lotto game, HiLo!

O.K., this is isn't being introduced anywhere, it's just an idea for a game had. And no, this has nothing in common with the Price is Right pricing game of the same name.

So, how do you play HiLo, if it could indeed be played? Well, very simple. All you have to do is pick 10 numbers from 1 to 20 (that's right, you pick half of the numbers in the number field). And if you match all 10 numbers, you win the grand prize. And here's what makes it unique, if you match no numbers at all, you also win the grand prize. This is possible becuase the odds of matching ten of ten, and the odds of matching zero of ten are the same. You also would win prizes for matching 7 or more numbers, or by matching 3 or fewer numbers. That's why it's called "HiLo." You win for having a "Hi" number of matches, and you win by having a "Lo" number of matches. So, as long as don't match 4, 5, or 6 out of 10, you would be a winner.

Here's a sample prize structure:

Match	Prize	Odds
10 or 0	$10,000	1:92,378
9 or 1	$100	1:923.8
8 or 2	$10	1:45.6
7 or 3	$1	1:6.4
Overall Odds 1:5.5

So, what do you think? Leave comments below.

Japanese Lotto Prologue

When I posted the article on lotteries in Japan a couple of days ago. Well, I missed something important in that post, how they draw the numbers. The machines they use are not anything like you've ever seen. First, let me show you what they use to to draw the Loto 6 and Mini Loto.

First the balls are manually fed into a sphere. Then, the machine works by first mixing the balls in the sphere at the top of the machine. Then the balls are poured unto a plate below. The plate then spins profusely like a centrifuge, mixing the balls further until one gets captured. The drawn ball is then placed on a rack, and the plate begins to spin again. The process is repeated until all the numbers are drawn. If you want to see this in action, click here to see it in action via streaming video.

The machine used to draw the Numbers games is even stranger. First, wheels are spun, which seem normal enough. But to actually select the numbers, the machine then shoots arrows (that's right, arrows) at the wheels, and whatever the arrow lands on will be the winning digit. If you want to see this in action, click here to see it in action via streaming video.

日本語ロト (Japanese Lotto)

Thanks to the wonder that is Babel Fish, I am able to decipher to many lotteries around the world. Keep looking back for more world lotteries in a series I will name at a later date.

You would think that a place like Japan would not have lotteries so similar to those here in the U.S. But, they are in fact very similar, they have two digit games, a pick 5, and a pick 6. The digit games are the same run of the mill games you see in many states, except for one key difference, the payouts are pari-mutuel, which is how it's also done in California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Plus, the two games (called Numbers 3 and Numbers 4), only pay out 45% of sales overall toward prizes, which is lower than most such games here in the states. Other than that, it's all the same, so no real story here.

The Loto 6 game is the big game in Japan, though it isn't nearly as big as other lottos in other countries. This has a lot to do with the fact that it only has 43 numbers to choose from, as opposed to, say, 49. And when the people in one of the world's largest economies all share a game that has such good odds, there are bound to be a lot of winners, and there are. There is almost always a top prize winner, and it's not uncommon to see more than 5 in one draw.

That all may seem like a impediment to rollovers, but they figured out how to make rollovers happen despite all the winners with a rather complicated rule. What they do is limit the amount that can be won to 200 million yen (or approximately US$2,000,000), and then put any jackpot monies in excess of ¥200,000,000 into the jackpot pool for the next draw. That next draw will also have a winnings limit, but it gets upped to ¥400,000,000 (or about $4 million US). That higher limit will continue as long as there is excess jackpot money, with the limit being lowered once there is draw where the jackpot pool is depleted.

And now, some facts about Loto 6:

• Tickets are 200 yen each (or about US$2)
• Pick 6 out of 43
• Drawings every Thursday at 6:45 pm Tokyo time (or 4:45 am Eastern time).
• Winnings to single winner are capped 200 million, or 400 million yen if money was carried over from the previous draw. Any jackpot money in excess of the limit will be carried over to the next week's draw.
• Prize and odds table is below:

Match	Prize in ¥	Approx. Prize in US$	Odds
6	About ¥100,000,000	US$1,000,000	1:6,096,454
5+Bonus	About ¥15,000,000	US$150,000	1:1,016,075.7
5	About ¥500,000	US$5,000	1:28,224.3
4	About ¥9,500	US$95	1:610.3
3	¥1,000	US$10	1:39.2
Overall Odds 1:36.81

Japan also has a pick 5 game called "Mini Loto". It is a far simpler game to explain because it doesn't have any complicated jackpot limit rules. It's a simple pick 5 out of 31, with a sixth bonus ball for second prize. It also appears to put a greater percentage of sales to the jackpot than Loto 6.

• Tickets are 200 yen each (or about US$2)
• Pick 5 out of 31
• Drawings every Tuesday at 6:45 pm Tokyo time (or 4:45 am Eastern time).
• Prize and odds table is below:

Match	Prize in ¥	Approx. Prize in US$	Odds
5	About ¥10,000,000	US$100,000	1:169,911
4+Bonus	About ¥150,000	US$1,500	1:33,982.2
4	About ¥10,000	US$100	1:1,359.3
3	About ¥1,000	US$10	1:52.3
Overall Odds 1:50.2

Well, there you go, that's Japanese Lotto. Leave comments if you have questions.