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Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

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Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#111

Post by briandear »

directional wrote: post #86
giarc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't have insider knowledge though. He used the games own rules to play an advantage. Those rules were available to everyone, everyone could have done the same.

The rules are available to everyone, but having enough cash to purchase that many lottery tickets certainly isn't. Unfortunately this is yet another system that enables the already rich to get richer on the backs of the poor.

Perhaps if the poor didn’t spend so much on lottery tickets their station might improve? If they know they are playing a losing bet, why keep doing it? And these folks that were winning were hardly hedge-fund managers. If the “poor” wanted to play to win, perhaps they could get everyone on their block to chip in to buy shares just like the old couple did? They could get all of their friends to save what they would have spent in the lottery over the course of the year, put that fund into the “pot” and then win, reinvesting it and repeating the process.

It’s hard to be sympathetic to people that make bad decisions as a habit. For example, if it’s a 1/5,000,000 chance of winning and they still keep playing, that’s on them. The have very little sympathy for losing lottery players. If people choose to spend their money like that, that’s their business, but that doesn’t invite sympathy when it doesn’t work out. It isn’t like they are being defrauded or even cheated. They have access to the same rules of the game and they have access to math just like everyone else.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#112

Post by Johnny555 »

izzydata wrote: post #95
ptaipale wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everywhere, people say they prefer lotteries where there are more prizes with smaller wins, instead of one winner with huge jackpot. But also everywhere, their actual bahaviour is that when there is one big jackpot, they bet more. And those who arrange lotteries do know their business.

That's probably true. They should try to educate people that if there are 250 times as many winners that your chances of winning a significant amount of money is much higher.

I think if you could educate people on their expected return from a lottery ticket purchase, they wouldn't play at all.

Telling people that they have a 95% chance of winning nothing at all is not a good way of selling lottery tickets.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#113

Post by arisAlexis »

bena wrote: post #94
ptaipale wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everywhere, people say they prefer lotteries where there are more prizes with smaller wins, instead of one winner with huge jackpot. But also everywhere, their actual bahaviour is that when there is one big jackpot, they bet more. And those who arrange lotteries do know their business.

Exactly. Don't listen to what people say they will do, watch what they actually do.

marcus Aurelius

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#114

Post by basementcat »

Johnny555 wrote: post #112
izzydata wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably true. They should try to educate people that if there are 250 times as many winners that your chances of winning a significant amount of money is much higher.

I think if you could educate people on their expected return from a lottery ticket purchase, they wouldn't play at all. Telling people that they have a 95% chance of winning nothing at all is not a good way of selling lottery tickets.

Expected return may be helpful but imo not sufficient without variance. Some cumulative jackpots are large enough that the expected return is actually profitable but the probability of actually hitting the numbers is vanishingly small.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#115

Post by Spooky23 »

Slartie wrote: post #25

When I read this kind of stories about US lotteries (and there seem to be several of this kind of stories going around), I always wonder how on earth it is possible for so many cases of failed lottery rule design to exist in the first place, and for those clear failures to persist for so long. Did no one notice that the lottery always lost huge sums of money during the Rolldown draws, while it gained money on normal…

Lotteries are run by a couple of companies, and the multi-state systems are run by fairly secretive organizations that have their share of issues.

End of the day, the providers don’t have much interest in finding problems, and the states have limited ability to detect them. Protecting the integrity of the system can be largely addressed with PR.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#116

Post by directional »

briandear wrote: post #111
directional wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rules are available to everyone, but having enough cash to purchase that many lottery tickets certainly isn't. Unfortunately this is yet another system that enables the already rich to get richer on the backs of the poor.

Perhaps if the poor didn’t spend so much on lottery tickets their station might improve? If they know they are playing a losing bet, why keep doing it? And these folks that were winning were hardly hedge-fund managers. If the “poor” wanted to play to win, perhaps they could get everyone on their block to chip in to buy shares just like the old couple did? They could get all of their friends to save what they would ha…

> Perhaps if the poor didn’t spend so much on lottery tickets their station might improve?

I agree, and indeed this is a good argument for prohibiting lotteries. They're a form of predatory gambling that relies largely upon irrationality, addiction, and desperation.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#117

Post by maxxxxx »

ptaipale wrote: post #89
coldcode wrote: post #69

I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.

Everywhere, people say they prefer lotteries where there are more prizes with smaller wins, instead of one winner with huge jackpot. But also everywhere, their actual bahaviour is that when there is one big jackpot, they bet more. And those who arrange lotteries do know their business.

When I play (I don't know why but somehow I find it fun) I actually play SuperLotto which has a chance of 1 in 41,416,353 vs 1 in 292,201,338 with PowerBall. Better to make a few million with better odds than a few hundred million with worse odds. Never mind that it's much more likely that I will get struck by lightning :-(

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#118

Post by SilasX »

twic wrote: post #70

The paper's reporting revealed that two groups were dominating Cash Winfall: the Selbee gang from Evart, Michigan, and their competition, a syndicate led by math majors from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These were kids young enough to be the Selbees' grandchildren. Incredibly, the MIT group bet between $17 and $18 million on Cash Winfall over a seven-year period, earning at least $3.5 million in pr…

Um, needing millions to risk on this means it isn't "available to everyone".

And yes, it is a risk, even if your mask is solid. There's always the risk that the lottery commission could say "oh, come on, the terms and conditions prohibit this kind of thing", leading to a protracted legal battle.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#119

Post by fragmede »

js2 wrote: post #65

Previous discussion a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16494280 On this submission: http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners...

The original Mass gaming commission report is floating around out there, if anyone is looking for additional reading on this subject, though it is of limited interest, outside of a select few MIT students and a couple from Michigan.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#120

Post by qtplatypus »

jedberg wrote: post #101

To all the folks saying, "how did the State not know the odds?", a lot of gambling games come out without anyone running the odds. A great example is blackjack switch [0]. The game was invented by an ex-gambler and he never really knew the odds of the game. He just convinced some casinos to try it and would advertise what their average take was. Because most people are bad at math and wouldn't play well, it was alway…

I work in the gambling industry and live in au. From my perspective this is super strange. By law vendors have to publish the odd (and on some games the EV).
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