Pedro Myers, co-owner of Glenda's Bar in Gloverville, hopes the lottery will help him replace losses from the ban on video poker. RON COCKERILLE/STAFF

Chairman C.B. Smith also said the commission is a few weeks from conducting interviews for an executive director.

The recently formed nine-member lottery commission has no Aiken-area representation.

Commission member James Bailey, of Charleston, said the group will meet Aug. 6 to discuss specifics of what type of stores will get machines. He also said South Carolina officials will head to Georgia the next day to see how it runs its lottery.

Georgia's lottery, which started selling tickets in 1993, continues to break records. This year, it surpassed its old record of $683 million by $9 million.

Florida's lottery has paid out more to schools than any other lottery in the nation.

All lotteries, however, are not doing well. Kentucky's signature Lotto Kentucky is being shut down because of poor dividends. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges modeled much of his original proposal on Kentucky's lottery plan.

Estimates on the coming revenues from the South Carolina budget office have weakened from nearly $450 million to about $120 million.

''I've always thought the projections were ... not realistic,'' South Carolina House Speaker David Wilkins said.

To keep revenues up, analysts say the lottery will have to be aggressively marketed.

Georgia and Florida have more than 40 instant games and five to six online games. And with states around South Carolina having or getting lotteries soon, one analyst says it might be overkill.

''My outlook and forecast for the lottery is an extremely abysmal, aggressive form of lottery,'' said Ed McMullen, whose South Carolina Policy Council has studied lotteries around the nation.

Mr. McMullen says South Carolina's economy can't sustain a lottery over a long period of time.

Pedro Myers, who co-owns Glenda's Bar in Gloverville with his wife, the bar's namesake, also said he thinks initial interest over the lottery will play out.

''For the first five years, it will be a pretty good boom for this state,'' he said. ''After that, it will fizzle.''

Mr. Myers had video poker machines and says he lost a lot of income when he was forced by law to remove them in June of last year. But he survived, unlike many others on his strip of South Carolina Highway 421.

Glenda's Bar is a private club, and Mr. Myers said it could be shut out from the lottery as officials look for more open and accessible places to put machines.

''I believe everybody with doors will have it,'' Mr. Meyers said. ''I'm glad to see it coming.''

Reach Matthew Boedy at (803) 648-1395 or mboedy@augusta.com.