A New Jersey Goof

Sometimes you have to wonder how many bureaucrats it would take to screw in a light bulb.

I lost faith in government officials and the U.S. Justice System when the federal government pulled the plug on gambling over the Internet and shut down a growing poker industry that was growing bigger every day. It destroyed bankrolls and put a lot of U.S. citizens out of business. The poker world is still struggling to recover from its effect.

And now, lo and behold, the New Jersey Lottery officials are showing how inept they are in understanding how poker works.

The State of New Jersey introduced a new lottery game called 'High Card Poker,' trying to capitalize on the popularity of the card game that the federal government tried to destroy.

Now everybody knows the odds against winning on those scratch-off tickets. The possibility of winning a substantial prize could be compared to being struck by lightning. Twice.

The new scratch-off game involving poker was released statewide on August 7. It didn't last long because the state officials who dreamed up the game didn't understand what cards constituted a winning poker hand.

Based on five-card draw, 'High Card Poker' placed two poker hands on a lottery ticket, yours and the dealer's. If your hand was best, you could win varying amounts of cash up to $150,000.

However, embarrassed lottery officials quickly discontinued the game when ticket buyers pointed out that the state failed to pay players who had scratched off their hand of Q-J-9-6-5 while the dealer's scratch-off cards were Q-10-7-6-4.

Poker players know that if two players held those two hands, the jack played as high card. Yet the State of New Jersey did not consider that a winning ticket and refused to pay the ticket holder who screamed to high heaven that he was being robbed.

Buyers of the poker lottery tickets were understandably upset by the miscue. A total of 4.3 million tickets had been printed and one million of them distributed to stores throughout New Jersey.

Lottery officials pulled the game off the shelves. To ease embarrassment, lottery officials said all winning tickets in circulation would be honored. To date, about 40,000 winning tickets have been paid off.

Northstar New Jersey privately operates new Jersey's Lottery. I wonder if the company will fire the brainy computer engineer who caused the goof.

In closing down the game, a state official said it was being done because of the 'potential for players to misunderstand the game's win scenarios.' Huh? Somebody call the floor man.