Patent ID: 7351142

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving from a customer a request to purchase a lottery ticket in exchange for a purchase amount that is less than one dollar; generating a combination of characters at random, the combination comprising: a first alphanumeric character, a second alphanumeric character, a third alphanumeric character, a fourth alphanumeric character, a fifth alphanumeric character, and a sixth alphanumeric character; printing a lottery ticket, the lottery ticket including: an indication of the combination of characters, an indication of the purchase amount, an indication of a draw date, and a signature line; providing the lottery ticket to the customer in exchange for the purchase amount; determining a set of lottery tickets purchased for a day's drawing, in which each lottery ticket is associated with a respective purchase amount and a respective combination of characters, the set of lottery tickets including the lottery ticket of the customer; determining a prize amount based on the respective purchase amounts; drawing a first winning lottery ticket from the set of lottery tickets; drawing a second winning lottery ticket from the set of lottery tickets; drawing a third winning lottery ticket from the set of lottery tickets; determining a total cost based on a purchase amount of the first winning lottery ticket, a purchase amount of the second winning lottery ticket, and a purchase amount of the third winning lottery ticket; receiving an indication of the combination of characters of the lottery ticket that was provided to the customer; determining whether the combination of characters is the same as the respective combination of characters associated with the first winning lottery ticket; and determining a share of the prize amount based on the purchase amount of the first winning lottery ticket and the total cost.