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Pick3 Sales Were Suspended June 16, 2005 ...
Here's WHY ...
As it appeared in the
Austin American Statesman
Brought to you by
The Lotto Report
Posted - Monday, June 20, 2005
Revised -
Comments in Blue below were made by the Lotto Report
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Pick 3 sales resume By Mark Lisheron If your pet Pick 3 numbers were 7-8-7 and you put down $1 before 6 p.m. Thursday, congratulations. You won $500. The rest of the night, those numbers were worth nothing. Pick 3 was up and running again Friday after the lottery operator suspended sales of the 50-cent and $1 tickets for the four hours leading up to Thursday's 10:12 p.m. drawing, Robert Elrod, a spokesman for the Texas Lottery Commission, said Friday. The drawing went on as scheduled, and sales of tickets for the state-sanctioned game resumed about 6 a.m. Friday, Elrod said. The shutdown cost the state at least $250,000 in lost ticket sales, according to Elrod. Sales of Pick 3 tickets for Thursday were $238,235.50. Daily sales for Wednesday were $521,586.50, and on Tuesday they were $493.787.50, he said. GTECH, the Rhode Island-based lottery operator for Texas, halted sales Thursday when random tests the company runs on the computers that generate the Quick Pick numbers at outlets statewide "produced numbers outside the standard deviation," Elrod said. The company corrected the problem overnight, during a period when Pick 3 terminals are normally shut down. Elrod said the sale of lottery tickets and the drawing of the three winning numbers are not connected, and the computer malfunction had no effect on the outcome of Thursday night's game. "We want to assure our players that the security and integrity of the game was in no way compromised by this," he said. Quick Pick Integrity? Can the TLC tell us that the Quick Pick selection is not Pseudo Random? I don't think they can - in fact - they simply won't say either way. Folks they make sure that the same number of each combination is sold so they won't get hit too hard financially. Clearly, this means the Quick Pick software is fixed and the numbers selected are not "a random pick of numbers." Anyway, computers (software) can not generate "random numbers." Just think ... If they give us "computerized draws" - meaning they do away with the balls and machines and let computers select the numbers drawn - they can make sure that the Quick Pick selection and the actual numbers drawn for the drawing are NOT the same so they can be sure there are no winners - this is how they would get their "rolls." Mostly, this would apply to Lotto Texas, Cash5 and Texas 2 Step as the majority of all tickets sold are Quick Picks for these games. The TLC MUST be stopped from proceeding with any ideas or plans of giving us "computerized drawings." Quick Picks, in which players allows the computer to select the numbers, are about 10 percent of all Pick 3 sales, Elrod said. The majority of players choose their own numbers, many of them playing the same numbers every day, sometimes days in advance. GTECH officials opted to stop all sales Thursday night, erring on the side of caution, he said. State law allows Pick 3 players to buy as many as 24 tickets, 12 each for the two daily drawings. The first drawing is held at 12:27 p.m. daily, the last at 10:12 p.m. A player may buy a 50-cent ticket with a payout of $250 or a $1 ticket that pays a maximum of $500. Pick 3 ranks behind Instant Tickets and Lotto Texas among the five computer-generated lottery games and provides 7.5 percent of all Texas lottery sales, Elrod said. |
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Attention Texas Players - Act Now! |
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