Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 5 · column 4 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
for several years.
When the Virginia lottery started, the initial offerings were so-called instant tickets. They are still offered but provide a relatively small part of the lottery earnings.
The first on-line game was Lotto, a pick 6 game whose top prizes range anywhere form SI million to more than $20 million. Lotto is drawn every Wednesday and Saturday night.
Pick 3 and Pick 4 are presently drawn six nights a week, but now that number will increase to a dozen times weekly.
Not only that but the Lottery Department has been rather blatant in its disregard for the restraint supposedly put on advertising. Just as the experts warned, after the novelty of a lottery wears off its continued success must depend on hard-sell advertising that seeks to persuade people to play it.
For instance, when Lotto first started with million dollar jackpots, people played in droves. At least they did until they realized if they hit only for a million they would get it in installments of S50.000 over 20 years even then about S 17,000 in federal and state taxes would be deducted from each installment.
This caused many people to decide to play Lotto only when the jackpot exceeded a certain level such as S3.5 or $5 million. Lately the Lottery Department has been running commercials telling folks that a million bucks, after all, isn't chiekenfeed and would make a nice addition to their checking accounts.
The odds of hitting the jackpot or Lotto or Cash 5, or even picking for
84.0%