4-Digits
Encyclopedia
4-Digits is a lottery
Lottery
A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments...

 in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

 and Malaysia. Individuals play by choosing any number from 0000 to 9999. Then, 23 winning numbers are drawn each time. If one of the numbers matches the one that the player has bought, a prize is won. A draw is conducted to select these winning numbers. 4-Digits is a fixed-odds game.

Magnum 4D is the 1st legalized 4D Operator licensed by the Malaysian Government to operate 4D. Soon thereafter, other lottery operators followed suit, as this is a very popular game in Malaysia and Singapore.

Singapore Pools
Singapore Pools
Singapore Pools is the only legal lottery operator in Singapore, incorporated in 1968 to curb illegal gambling. It provides a legal avenue for betting in Singapore....

 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
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

.

4-Digits is somewhat similar to "Pick 4" in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

History

The 4-D game is believed to have originated in Kedah
Kedah
Kedah is a state of Malaysia, located in the northwestern part of Peninsular Malaysia. The state covers a total area of over 9,000 km², and it consists of the mainland and Langkawi. The mainland has a relatively flat terrain, which is used to grow rice...

 in 1951, based on evidence during a gambling trial
Trial (law)
In law, a trial is when parties to a dispute come together to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court...

 in a Singapore court in 1956.

A schoolboy decided to raffle
Raffle
A raffle is a competition in which people obtain numbered tickets, each ticket having the chance of winning a prize. At a set time, the winners are drawn from a container holding a copy of every number...

 his bicycle
Bicycle
A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....

 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
Singapore Turf Club
The Singapore Turf Club was founded in 1842 as the Singapore Sporting Club to operate the Serangoon Road Race Course at Farrer Park.It is today the only horse-racing club in Singapore and is part of the Malayan Racing Association, which also regulates the three Turf Clubs in Malaysia, the Selangor...

 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 computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

ised 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 or "prosper" in Mandarin and is traditionally a favourite among punters. Punters welcomed the new 4-D product and the company's turnover
Revenue
In business, revenue is income that a company receives from its normal business activities, usually from the sale of goods and services to customers. In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, revenue is referred to as turnover....

 that year increased 215%, to over S$
Singapore dollar
The Singapore dollar or Dollar is the official currency of Singapore. It is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or alternatively S$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...

283 million.

Methods of play

Ordinary entry refers to a specific number. Example: 1234. 4-D Roll 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). System entry is a bet on all the possible permutations of a 4-D number, for example the number 1234 has 24 permutations (1234, 2341, 3412, 4123…). iBet is a System Entry bet priced from $1, regardless of the number of permutations. Quick pick is bet on a random number selected by a computer.

Singapore

In Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, 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
Backup
In information technology, a backup or the process of backing up is making copies of data which may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form is back up in two words, whereas the noun is 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
Variance
In probability theory and statistics, the variance is a measure of how far a set of numbers is spread out. It is one of several descriptors of a probability distribution, describing how far the numbers lie from the mean . In particular, the variance is one of the moments of a distribution...

 margin. This is to ensure that every ball has an equal chance of being drawn.

The selected machines, secured under lock and numbered seal
Seal (device)
A seal can be a figure impressed in wax, clay, or some other medium, or embossed on paper, with the purpose of authenticating a document ; but the term can also mean the device for making such impressions, being essentially a mould with the mirror image of the design carved in sunken- relief or...

 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
Audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...

. 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.

Malaysia

In Malaysia, there are three main 4D providers - Sports Toto, Magnum 4D and Da Ma Cai. Da Ma Cai is run by Pan Malaysian Pools Sdn. Bhd. which also organises racing bets. The other two are independent companies.

Magnum 4D offers the classic 4D game - the player picks a 4 digit number and chooses the amount he wants to bet. There are "Big" and "Small" Forecasts. A "Small" bet will warrant higher winnings, but the player will only win if his number comes up in the first, second or third places. The winnings are lower for a "Big" bet, but in addition to the first, second and third places, there are 10 "Special" numbers which pay RM200 for a RM1 bet, and 10 "consolation" numbers which pay RM60 for a RM1 bet. Magnum is the first legalised 4D operator to be awarded the license by the Malaysian Government.

Da Ma Cai (大马彩; literally "Pan-Malaysia Lottery" in Mandarin) has a 3D game as well as 4D (which they call 1+3D). Unlike the 1+3D, the 3D only has first, second, and third places. Prizes are significantly lower than 1+3D, the top prize being RM660 for Big First Place. Their 1+3D follows the same structure as the Magnum 4D.

Sports Toto, in addition to the basic 4D played the same way as Magnum and Da Ma Cai, runs 5D and 6D games as well. Unlike 4D, 5D and 6D do not have "Big" and "Small" Forecasts. First prize for 6D is RM100,000 and first prize for 5D is RM15,000. If the last 4, 3, or 2 digits of your 5D number (or the last 5, 4, 3, or 2 digits of your 6D number) match the first prize number, you still get a prize. Sports Toto also offers three lottery games, similar to those seen in Western countries. These are Mega Toto 6/52, Power Toto 6/55 & Supreme Toto 6/58. The last number indicates the highest number - Mega Toto 6/52 requires the player to pick 6 numbers from 1 to 52. The Supreme Toto 6/58 has the highest prizes (first prize is a minimum of more than RM8.8 million) but the probability of winning is lower than the others games as there are more numbers.
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