4-Digits

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4-Digits (Abbreviation: 4-D) is a lottery in Singapore and Malaysia. People play by choosing any number from 0000 to 9999. Then, 23 winning numbers are drawn each time. If one of the numbers match the one that the player has bought, a prize is won. The 4-D banker chooses the bets with the lowest bet frequencies for the prizes.

Singapore Pools is the sole provider of gambling games in Singapore. 4-D and lottery 6/45 are two of the most popular. A similar 4-D game with its prize structure fully revealed can be found in Taiwan. [1]

4-Digits is somewhat similar to "Pick 4" in the United States and Canada.

Contents

[edit] History[2]

The 4-D game is believed to have originated in Kedah in 1951, based on evidence during a gambling trial in a Singapore court in 1956.

A schoolboy decided to raffle his bicycle for 100 $1 tickets, each bearing two digits. The winner would be the one whose ticket number matched the last two digits of the first prize ticket in a Malaysian Turf Club sweepstake. This led to the 2-D lottery, which in turn gave rise to 3-D and later, 4-D, betting games which were wildly popular in Singapore and Malaysia from the 1950s.

The Singapore Turf Club was the first to introduce the 4-D draw in Singapore in May 1966, offering a S$2,000 first prize for a $1 ticket. It stopped offering it in May 2004 when its sister company Singapore Pools took over all the draws.

Singapore Pools launched computerised betting for 4-D on 31 May 1986, and it got off to an auspicious start when the winning number for the first prize in the inaugural draw turned out to be 8838. The number "8" sounds like fa (simplified Chinese: 发) or "prosper" in Mandarin and is traditionally a favourite among punters. Punters welcomed the new 4-D product and the company's turnover that year increased 215%, to over S$283 million.

[edit] The draw in Singapore[2]

In Singapore, 4-D draws are conducted every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday in the evening at Singapore Pools' main branch at Paradiz Centre. Anyone above the age of 18 can attend the draw.

An independent external auditor and five draw officials are involved in the draw process. Before the draw, a specially designed computer is run to randomly select the draw machine and the set of draw balls to be used. A backup machine is also chosen.

The selected draw balls, numbered 0 to 9, are weighed and check that their individual weight is within acceptable variance margin. This is to ensure that every ball has an equal chance of being drawn.

The selected machines, secured under lock and numbered seal in a storage room, is transferred to the draw hall, along with the balls.

The balls are loaded into the draw machine in front of the audience. A member of the audience is then invited to press the start switch on the control panel, launching the draw. The balls in the draw machine, made up of four transparent cylinders, spin until a ball is sucked into a groove found in each cylinder.

The drawing process, starting from the consolation prizes, is repeated until all 23 sets of numbers are drawn.

[edit] Methods of Play

A 4-D betting slip in Singapore
A 4-D betting slip in Singapore

[edit] Ordinary Entry

Ordinary entry refers to a specific number. Example: 1234

[edit] 4-D Roll

4-D Roll refers to a bet which substitutes any one of the four digits with 'R'. (i.e. R123, 1R23, 12R3 and 123R) where 'R' denotes all digits from 0 to 9. Only one digit can be substituted with 'R'. For example, if you mark R234, you are actually buying 10 Ordinary Entries (i.e. 0234, 1234, 2234, 3234... 9234).

[edit] System Entry

System entry refers to a bet on all the possible permutations of a 4-D number, e.g. the number 1234 has 24 permutations (1234, 2341, 3412, 4123…).

[edit] iBet

iBet is a System Entry bet priced from $1, regardless of the number of permutations.

[edit] Quickpick

Quick pick refers to a bet on a random number selected by the computer.

[edit] References

  1. ^ About Tawian Lottery
  2. ^ a b Mak Mun San. "4-D a winner? You bet", The Sunday Times, 8 July 2007. 

[edit] External links