Interesting
Stories

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About That $100 Scratch Ticket
I'm mad and you should be too. Bottom
line for this irresponsible stunt is to make
up for the losses for going to 3 draws
per week. Posted 5/18/22 - Part 1
Click here

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- Once Again -
I Have Defective Lottery Tickets -
I purchased illegible lottery tickets
and the Texas Lottery is refusing
to tell me what numbers were suppose
to be printed on them. They're claiming
it's "Confidential" information. They filed
for an AG Opinion. Unbelievable -
A Must Read ....
Posted 4/20/22 - Click here

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Beware - This Could Have
Been A Costly Error
TLC errs during live Nov 19, 2020
Pick3 Evening draw causing others to err.
An interesting read. Posted 11/21/20
Click here

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A Most Intriguing Email
It's extremely well written, funny, informative
and complimentary. A must read for all.
Posted 9/28/20. Click here

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A Second Letter Has Been
Sent To The TLC Showing
No Citizen Could Obtain The
Same Information I Requested
& Still Haven't Received
- Sad but True -
A link to this letter was added to my original
Open Records posting. Go read the new letter and
see the Weeky Reports I had requested but still
haven't obtained ... You'll find the new paragraph
under "Before Reading This Page" near the
top. Originally Posted 7/28/20 but
Updated 8/8/20, Click here

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By Using My Fun 5's Deposition,
The Lottery Has Claimed I Don't
Qualify As A "News Agency"
or As A "Reporter" And Must
Pay To Receive Public Information
I guess what ya'll read on my site is NOT of
public interest! <grin>. Read my response and
see the evidence that I do qualify under Gov
Code 552.275(j). I think many of you will find
the links to previous postings of great interest. It
certainly brought back memories for me! Be sure
to read the editorial found in the 7/19/20
Pick3 Combinations Report found on this page
too. Director Grief has budgeted $110,000 for
HIS out of state travel for FY21.
Originally Posted 7/28/20, Click here

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Playing the Lottery is
Not Worth Dying Over
Italy, Spain & China suspended
lottery sales in an attempt to
protect their citizens. Obviously,
the US doesn't care because
they are continuing to lure millions
of players from their homes
each day for the sole purpose
of purchasing lottery tickets
- a non- essential product.
What a confusing message
officials have sent ... They say,
"stay at home and only leave
to purchase "essential" items -
if your caught going out
you could be fined" as they
continue to allow the sale of
lottery products. A must read.
Posted 4/8/20. Click here

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As it appears in The Intercept
States Declare Lotteries "Essential"
The Government only cares about
your money, not your well being.
Unbelievable 4/16/20 - Click here

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Texas' Fun 5's
Scratch Ticket Lawsuit

TX Supreme Court Hears
Oral Arguments On The
Fun 5 Scratch Ticket
Texas Lottery Players have hope. Many
thanks to the outstanding attorneys
gracious enough to represent hard
working Texans who were rejected
by their elected officials. Read Dec 3, 2019
story on the Fun 5's Update page. Click here

The Lawyers Blog
- Updated March 1, 2022 -
The Honorable Amy Clark Meachum denied
GTECH’s motion for summary judgment.
Judge Meachum also notified the
parties that the first bellwether trial in her
court would be postponed until sometime
after July 1 due to court backlogs
caused by the pandemic.
Read story. Click here

Check Out Lotto Report's
New Fun 5's "Site Map"
And Continue To Watch
Our Update Page!

Media Coverage - Fun 5's
Many news stories can be found
on our NEW Site Map page
USA Today - Caller Times (1/23/18)

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Director Gary Griefs
Favorite Pastime
- Traveling The World For Free -
A minimum of 105 trips at a cost
of a minimum of $160,000.
An unbeliebable story - Click here

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Duplicate Winning Numbers
Drawn? Hmm ... Are
Computertized Draws
"Really" Random
& Trustworthy?
Yet another investigative story
showing WHY RNG's should be
banned for use by the Legislatures.
Can you imagine having the same set
of 5 or 6 numbers drawn in consecutive
draws? Of course, the lottery ignored it!
Remarkable findings - every one should
read this story by Jason Clayworth,
DeMoines Register, 1/31/19.Click here.

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Lottery Lawsuit Granted
Class Action Status
Affects 7.2 Million Tickets
In 19 States
Lotteries have been taking advantage
of players for a long time. In so many
ways and players have no recourse.
So I'm thrilled to see a court allow
players to fight back. Great story - let's
all hope there's justice for players in the
end. Great story by Jason Clayworth,
an Investigative Reporter with
the Des Moines Register
Posted 1/29/19 - Click here

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Unbelievable Duplicate
Quick Picks
Louisiana players buys 4
tickets, all tickets have
the same numbers.
Very sad. (Nov 7, 2013 -
Updated Nov 12, 2013)
Click here.

Virginia Player Receives
Duplicate Quick Picks
Read March 27, 2016 entry
on "Continued" Daily Page
Click here

Texas Player Buys
7 Quick Picks And
Receives 7 Identical
Tickets
An Unbelievable
Story - Posted 3/15/12,
Click here

Will Texas Honor
The Rule & The Face
Value of My Scratch
Tickets
This letter was submitted
to Gary Grief - Director
of the TLC. I'm asking
that my winning tickets
be paid - Unbelievable
story and only the tip
of the iceberg regarding
Texas scratch tickets.
After you read the letter,
tell me - do you think
it's a winning ticket?
Should they pay me?
Posted 12/10/12.
Click here

Lottery Terminals
Err - Here is
Absolute Proof
Posted 7/12/07 -
Don't let this happen to
you. Check your own
tickets! Click here
Very Interesting.

Editorial & Opinions by Dawn Nettles

5/17/21 - Short note for you and a request for you to please speak up immediately ....

Say NO To Sunday Drawings
Click here for details

4/2/21 - I errered on the 3/31/21 posting below - I said they sold 1.5 million Powerball tickets but that was an error. I accidentially picked up sales rather than the number of actual tickets sold. Powerball tickets are $2 each so this means TX only sold 760,014 total tickets on 3/31. The corrected sentence is marked in red below.

3/31/21 (Minor edit 4/2/21) - Just a quick note .... Many of you have pointed this out to me so let's just share it so everyone can see it .... Talk about "another" coincidence .... Hmmmm ....

Imagine - one number differences in all 5 numbers drawn in 2 Step ... FYI ... there are 1,832,600 total combinations. Unbelievable!

I've been following the lottery since 1992 and I've never seen ANY retailer sell as many jackpot winning tickets as Winners Corner has been selling. I guess it's another coincidence that the winning tickets - of recent - are self pick tickets too. They sold a jackpot winning ticket for All or Nothing tongiht - 3/31/21. For this game, since it began, the 3/31 win was the 117th win out of a total of 10,452 total drawings! (Very few jackpot winners - sad but true)

And one more thing worth mentioning .... for tonight's (3/31/21) Powerball drawing, TX had three 4+1 winning tickets and ALL 3 (100% of the winning tickets) were Power Play tickets meaning the prizes were $150K each. The odds of winning the 4+1 prize is 1-in-913,129 and TX only sold 301,198 PowerPlay tickets. All total, they ONLY sold 760,014 million Powerball tickets which includes the PowerPlay tickets. ($1,520,028 in sales). (Corrected this sentence on 4/2/21)

Can you imagine - they only sell 750K tickets and 3 of those 750K tickets matched 4+1 numbers with odds of 913,129-to-one for that one prize. WOW!

Not only that, but 50% of the 4+0 winning tickets were multiplied too. There were eighteen 4+0 winning tickets and nine of them were multiplied meaning those 9 tickets were worth $200 each. (FYI - The odds of winning 4 + 0 is 36,525-to-one.)

Folks there are 292,201,338 combinations in this game and the few tickets TX sold had this many that were purchased with PowerPlay .... WOW ... What are the odds????

We have no way of confirming how many winners there really are for any of the games. We have to take the TLC at their word. Should you wonder why any lottery would ever consider inflating the number of winners - if they did or ever have - would be to increase the payouts so they can say they return 50% of sales to the players. This would be the incentive for increasing the payouts and number of winners.

01/18/21 - What a year 2020 was. I don't know about you, but I'm soooo glad it over.

I have a number of things to report but I'm only going to cover one today because everyone needs to know about this. And I do hope that you will take a minute of your time to speak up.

The Texas Lottery has QUIETLY proposed a rule change for Lotto Texas, TX 2 Step and Powerball. It's a very simple change - they are removing the draw days and draw times from the official game rules. Instead, they want the rule to read, "Lotto Texas base game drawings shall be held each week on the days and at times specified by the executive director." (Same language for TX 2 Step and Powerball rules) This is so very wrong.

When I said, "quietly" - 20 years ago the Commissioners and members of the legislature instructed the Texas Lottery that when they wanted to change a game rule, they MUST make it highly visible on their website so players would know and players could comment.

In this case, there was no press release and the only thing highly visible on the TLC website is that horrible pop up telling us there's a jackpot alert which we all already know. They are enticing spending that many players can't afford.

Did you know, on each games separate webpage, there's no link to its official game rule? Sad but true. To find the rules, you have to HUNT it down using the Site Map.

Anyway, now you need to ask yourself WHY would they want to remove - from an official game rule - when a game will be played? Since 1992 - Lotto Texas has been played every Wednesday and Saturday at 10:12 p.m. Texas 2 Step started out on Tuesday's and Friday's but the draws were moved to Mondays and Thursday to accommodate Mega Millions.

They DO have a reason - they just didn't want anyone to know WHY. So ... I'm going to tell you .... here's the big secret ....

They plan to play Powerball 3 times per week

The reason ... MORE MONEY - meaning they expect you to spend more and lose more. It's requiring at least 30 consecutive draws for the jackpots to climb to an amount where sales begin to explode. As it stands today, the next PB draw will be the 36th consecutive draw with no jackpot winner and the jackpot is $730 million. Yet, on Jan 13, 2016, on the 20th consecutive PB draw, the jackpot was advertised at $1.5 Billion. For that one draw, they sold 635.2 million tickets (sales was $1.2 billion) and there were 3 winners. (Links to sales pages so you can see and compare draw sales is at the end of this story)

Who knows ... maybe this story will stop that plan to conduct 3 Powerball draws per week. If enough of you speak up it might stop it!

The purpose of this story is to address the proposed rule change to remove from the OFFICIAL Lotto Texas, TX 2 Step and Powerball rules exactly when drawings will be held each week. Rules should be INCLUSIVE of all pertinent information. In case you don't understand the severity of this change - imagine if you will, the Lotto Texas jackpot could climb to $47 million after 74 consecutive draws again and Director Gary Grief, if he wanted, could halt the draws. They could keep the prize money for a while longer. And they are known for keeping prize money longer than they should! In fact, I have another story forthcoming about this very issue.

Bottom line, the Commissioners should NOT adopt this rule and it is NOT too late to comment even though the comment period is technically over. But you have to tell the Commissioners so when they meet, they'll have heard from you before they vote. That is, IF the Commissioners "really" receives their emails and the TLC doesn't delete them.

Here's the Commissioners individual email addresses should you want to write them separately or you can simply click here and the email will be pre-addressed and ready for you to write and send. All you really need to say is that you oppose the proposed rule change for 401.305, 401.312 and 401.317 - that is - if you oppose it. This also gives you an opportunity to share your complaints ... you know, those that you share with me me! I've included one elected official on this email because he sits on the Committee with direct oversight to the TLC.

Commissioner Mark Franz
mark.franz@lottery.state.tx.us

Commissioner Jamey Steen
Jamey.steen@lottery.state.tx.us

Commissioner Erik Saenz
erik.saenz@lottery.state.tx.us

Chairman Robert Rivera
Robert.Rivera@lottery.state.tx.us

Commissioner Cindy Lyons Fields
clyons@lb-cpa.com

Ryan Guillen
Member of the Licensing & Administrative Committee
ryan.guillen@house.texas.gov

Dawn Nettles
lottoreport@lottoreport.com
I'm including myself so I know what they received.
If you object, simply remove my email address.

TLC General Counsel
bob.biard@lottery.state.tx.us
(I didn't include him on the email even
though he is the one to receive the comments)

Finally, here's links so you can see what I'm talking about with regard to sales "exploding." If you study these pages, you can see how bad PB and MM sales have declined over the years. You'll find links on each of these pages to previous years draw sales.

PB draw sales, click here
MM draw sales (all states combined), click here
MM draw sales (TX draw sales only), click here
Compare MM and PB draw sales, click here
Compare number of tickets sold for each draw, click here

In concluding this writing, you have to speak up to be heard, otherwise, they think nobody cares.

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9/28/20 - I received an email yesterday that everyone should go read. It's extremely well written, funny and informative. Click here.

9/5/20 - Let's compare a decade ago to now .... I'm showing this is because our lottery director is proudly announcing that it's been a decade since players were able to play for a jackpot this size. WHAT? I guess he forgot the purpose of Powerball and Mega Millions was to offer players large jackpots. Huh?? Is he still delusional?

What happened? Looks like Texas is the ultimate loser of revenue. But we all really know the answer to this question ... 54 balls - the state is the "benefactor" of Director Grief's refusal to give the players the matrix they asked for even though Commissioner Clowe told them to change the game to 50 balls.

Just so ya'll know, Mr.Grief use to tell the Commissioners and the Legislature the reason for the decline in Lotto Texas sales is "player fatigue." I assume he is still telling them the same thing - how could this be when he just issued a press release saying how popular this game is? Sounds like propaganda to me.

8/17/20 - After posting yesterday's story - so many of you have asked about previous Lotto Texas wins - how many draws per roll and what were roll sales. Well, it occurred to me that I have all this information posted. You can find a re-cap of all wins since April 12, 2008 by clicking here.

I also posted a spreadsheet (pdf) showing all wins between 1996 - 2003. You'll find the link on the same page.

I also have all draws/rolls since 2000 posted on a series of pages, but to go to the beginning year 2000, would not be easy because my site was moved to a new server and the addresses are case sensitive. I was not consistent in renaming the new carry-over pages. I need to correct that then give you links.

If you want to see the first page postd in 2000, click here. The names of the pages are all "prizepayouts" then in order by a, b, c, d, e .... The problem is that some addresses start with a capital "P" and some aren't plural - if you know what I mean. For now, it'd be easier to simply review the win since April 2008!

Now read on about Mr. Grief being delusional!

08/16/20 - About the Lotto Texas game that has now gone to 62 consecutive drawings .... Imagine, there's been 61 drawings with no jackpot winner. This is pure rape.

Texas Lottery Director Gary Grief said, "Lotto Texas has been on an exciting run and now the jackpot has emerged as the largest on the continent, said Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission. This game has always been a favorite among Texas Lottery players, and we know they will be thrilled to play for one of the largest prizes in the world. We want to remind our players to play responsibly. It only takes one ticket to win." Click here to read press release.

I don't know of any other way to describe Director Gary Grief other than to call him delusional - much like many of our elected officials.

Is my name calling appropriate? Let's verify ....

There is not ONE lottery player on this continent
who believes it is an "exciting run" for Texas
citizens to LOSE 61 straight times. It appears
Grief honestly believes players play to lose.
How very sick.

No more so than are "older people" willing to
give their lives to help the Texas economy
as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said.
Click here to read

These statements are the absolute
definition of "delusional."

Folks, it's near the end of their FY year and Grief wants
sales to increase from last year. And, according to my
records, Lotto sales have already surpassed
FY19 sales by just a little.

But The Truth Is, Lotto Sales Suck.
Let me show you. Go to any of these pages
to compare sales to like jackpot amounts.

Ticket Sales By The Draw
LOTTO TEXAS - TEXAS LOTTO
2019 - 2020, Click here
2018, 2019, Click here
2016, 2017, Click here
2014, 2015 - Click here
2012, 2013 - Click here
2010, 2011 - Click here
2008, 2009 - Click here
2006, 2007 - Click here
2004, 2005 - Click here
2002, 2003 - Click here
1999, 2000, 2001 - Click Here
1996, 1997, 1998 - Click Here
1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 - Click Here

By getting press coverage, Grief hopes to bring in
$10, $20, $30 million for this one draw. And I would
bet that they are banking on the ILLEGAL internet
sales to reach their goal. How 'bout that - Texans
build the pot so an out of state person can take it home.

Imagine, Grief is bragging about this $32 million jackpot
yet California had a $72 million jackpot that was won
after the 66th drawing in Jan 2017. There's NO way
Texas could reach $72 million in the next 4 draws.
They would have to sell approx $80 million tickets
in the next 4 draws to reach a $72 million jackpot.

You keep asking me .... Are they cheating?
I can't say if they are cheating in the manner that you
think they are, but they are cheating you by selling you
tickets for a game with odds so high that they're
confident it won't be won. There's 25.8 million
combinations but they've only been selling
1.4 million tickets (until last night where they
sold $1.8 million) but many of these are duplicates.

So you do the math. I'm not really sure if I should
call this "cheating" or "screwing."

YES, I'm mad that the lottery can get away with this. But
after seeing what's taking place at the Federal level, and
how Texas officials have closed their eyes and ears, I've
come to realize the only thing these people care about
is screwing people for MONEY.

Ya'll better vote all of them OUT of office!

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