I was just checking the Florida Lottery website to see if anyone had claimed the winning tickets from the December 6th Lotto draw. Though no one has, one thing that is posted is where the tickets were purchased, and whether they were quick picks.
It appears that both winners of the Lotto from December 6th purchased quick picks.
Now from my perspective, that raises an interesting question: why would these terminals be spitting out duplicate quick picks in a game where there are some 22 million combinations available? Is this intentional on the part of programmers to have "random" quick picks not be so random? If so, it would appear that would lower the total number of combinations at play during any particular draw. The lower number of total combinations purchased out of the total number of possible combinations available makes it more likely that the jackpot is not hit and rolls over.
Let's just take a theoretical five million quick pick tickets purchased: if out of those five million quick picks only one million combinations are actually sold (i.e., they're giving the same numbers to multiple players), then it is more likely that the jackpot is not hit, the jackpot rolls, and you have a not-surprising result for the State: more money for them. Not only are they not paying the jackpot amount that draw, but they are also setting up higher jackpots later which draw more players (or from their perspective, more losers, which in turn is more money for them).
I also checked the history of Fantasy 5 winners, and there appears to be the same anomaly: winners who do win with quick picks have other quick pick winners that have joined in the win. This can be particularly lucrative for the State in the event a winner fails to claim their prize (certainly a possibility with a quick pick purchase on the fly).
Thoughts? I like the convenience of grabbing a quick pick, but am I just grabbing a number the State already gave to someone else?