KY Lottery to begin new 3 Line Lotto

Monday, April 09, 2007 posted 11:02 AM EDT

A new game -- 3 Line Lotto -- is taking the place of Tic Tac Cash, which the Kentucky Lottery Corp. dropped at the end of last month.

Tickets for the new game, which cost $2 each, go on sale across the state next Monday for the first drawing the following day.

With each ticket, players will get 18 numbers -- three lines of six numbers each from a field of 1 through 39.

"We think players are really going to enjoy … the multiple ways they can win on each ticket," said Steve Casebeer, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Kentucky Lottery.

Six numbers will be drawn, and players can win a prize by matching at least three numbers on a single line.

They also can win for matching a total of at least five numbers from any of the three lines.

Tickets can win combined prizes for both types of wins.

For example, a ticket that has two correct numbers on line one, three correct on line two and four correct on line three would win $2 for line two and $20 for line three.

The same ticket would win $200 for matching a total of nine numbers from all the lines.

The odds of winning any prize in the game are one in 6.4, Casebeer said.

Players can either pick the first line of numbers themselves or use computer-generated Quick Pick numbers. The other two lines of numbers will be Quick Picks.

To win the jackpot -- which starts at $100,000 and rises with each drawing it isn't hit -- players must match all six numbers on a single line.

Drawings for 3 Line Lotto will be held on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Lotto-style games in which six numbers are drawn have had roller-coaster success in Kentucky, often starting out hot but then losing the interest of players.

Lotto Kentucky had a 12-year run, but sales dropped steadily after 1996. Lottery officials said at the time that players had become "desensitized" because of larger jackpots, such as the multistate Powerball drawing.

The state partnered with Virginia and Georgia in 2001 to form Lotto South, which replaced Lotto Kentucky in an effort to generate more players and bigger jackpots.

Sales of Lotto South tickets began to diminish after about a year and a half, and the game was dropped in favor of Win For Life, which is still in the state's lineup.

Likewise, 3 Line Lotto arrives after a sharp drop in sales of Tic Tac Cash.

"Players vote with their dollars as to the games that they like," said Chip Polston, a Kentucky Lottery spokesman.

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