State lottery to debut changes to Lotto Texas
05/03/2003

The Associated Press

AUSTIN — Lotto Texas is getting another makeover.

In an effort to increase the size of the jackpots, the Texas Lottery Commission will debut a revamped version of the twice-a-week game on Sunday.

Gone is the old system, where players chose six numbers from a field of 54. The new rules will let players choose five numbers from a pool of 44, then choose another number, or bonus ball, from a separate field of 44.

Those who match all five from the first field and the bonus ball would win the jackpot, which starts at $4 million and continues to grow until somebody wins. The odds of winning it all will jump from 1 in 25.8 million to 1 in 47.7 million.

While jackpot winners should be less frequent, the new Lotto Texas will boost the odds of winning any prize to 57-to-1 from 71-to-1. The number of prize tiers will increase from four to eight and the number of overall winners will jump approximately 25 percent, lottery officials said.

"You've got to keep the game fresh and new," Reagan Greer, executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission, said in Saturday's editions of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Players speak with the dollars, and all of the evidence suggest that people like big jackpots."

The revised game will give players additional ways of winning. For example, players who match the first five numbers will win an estimated $10,000. Those who match four numbers in the first draw plus the bonus ball will win about $2,000 on a $4 million jackpot.

Greer said the hope is that higher odds against winning drive up jackpots into the tens of millions, spurring increased ticket sales. He predicted that jackpots could climb to as high as $100 million three times a year.

The state Comptroller's office said the new game will increase lottery revenue to the state by about $50 million a year. Texas already gets about $1 billion a year from its lottery games. The money goes toward public schools.

Lotto Texas began in 1992 and originally let players chose six numbers from a field of 50. The field was increased to 54 in 2000.

Those changes didn't prove to be the remedy officials had hoped. They have blamed that failure in part on the fact that players are winning more frequently than was anticipated at the relatively low levels of $4 million and $6 million.

Saturday night's $7 million jackpot will be the last drawing for the old Texas Lotto game. Tickets for the new game will be sold Sunday, with the first drawing Wednesday night.

There is no name for who wrote this story so my contact for the AP wire is:
Jim Vertuno - e-mail: jvertuno@ap.org

Note: This story is what the TLC wants the press to run.