How Draws Work

At the published closing time, DR3AMS stops accepting entries in accordance with the competition rules. The draw dataset is then prepared from valid entries.

DR3AMS reconciles confirmed paid orders, valid free entries, refunds, void entries and relevant eligibility records before winner selection.

Only tickets attached to active, confirmed entries are eligible. An attempted payment or incomplete order is not included, and refunded or void entries cannot win.

Where paid and free routes are offered, every valid ticket enters the same locked roster and is treated in exactly the same way.

Eligible tickets are ordered by ticket number and copied into an immutable draw snapshot. The snapshot records the lock time and the ticket, customer and entry references needed to reconstruct the roster.

Once the snapshot exists, later orders, refunds or administrative changes cannot silently rewrite the draw population.

The locked snapshot is converted into a consistent canonical record and fingerprinted using SHA-256. If any ticket, customer reference, entry reference, order or lock detail changes, the fingerprint changes and the draw is rejected.

A hash is not encryption. It is a tamper-evident fingerprint used to prove that the roster selected from is the same roster that was locked.

At execution, the server requests 32 random bytes — 256 bits — from the operating system's cryptographically secure random source. The seed is generated at that moment and is not typed, chosen or adjusted by a member of staff.

The process does not inspect names, spending, order value, entry time or previous results when generating the seed.

The seed is processed through SHA-256 in numbered blocks. The process reads a 48-bit random value and uses rejection sampling to map it to one position in the locked ticket roster.

Rejection sampling discards the tiny part of the numerical range that would make some positions slightly more likely under simple division. Every position from the first ticket to the last therefore has the same probability.

The winning ticket and draw evidence are written in one protected database transaction. The competition row is locked while this happens, and a database uniqueness rule permits only one standard seeded draw for that competition.

If two requests arrive together, only one can succeed. Once completed, the draw cannot be rerun, replaced or edited into a different winner.

• Competition and unique draw-record identifiers.
• Snapshot lock time and final eligible-ticket count.
• SHA-256 snapshot fingerprint.
• The 256-bit random seed.
• Algorithm version: sha256-rejection-v1.
• Selected zero-based roster index and winning ticket.
• Execution time and responsible administrator.
• Winner verification, publication and prize-fulfilment status.

The selected customer is a provisional winner until required age, identity, eligibility and anti-fraud checks are complete. Those checks confirm eligibility; they do not let staff substitute a preferred winner.

Completed competitions and permitted winner details appear in Closed Draws, Results & Winners. If a provisional winner is ineligible, DR3AMS follows the published redraw or alternate-winner procedure and records the reason rather than choosing a replacement informally.