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Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

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Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#171

Post by kijin »

MegaButts wrote: post #153
rwc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishing the odds is common. Doing the math on those odds apparently is not.

But in order to publish the odds, you have to know the odds. And the only way to know the odds is to do the math, correct? Unless you're making a distinction for determining the odds during optimal play (which makes a lot more sense to me).

Lotteries are required to publish the odds of matching x out of y numbers. Once the design is fixed, this figure does not change.

The expected dollar value of a winning ticket, on the other hand, changes every week depending on the number of tickets sold that week as well as the amount of any unclaimed jackpot(s) rolled over from previous weeks. I won't be surprised if state lotteries are not legally required to publish these figures every week. Nobody wants to be held responsible for a precise amount published on Tuesday when a snowstorm on Friday causes ticket sales to plummet.

Many states do publish estimates of the jackpot, of course, for advertising purposes. But they're only estimates, and I've never seen estimates of anything other than the jackpot. The Selbees took advantage of smaller winnings that usually go unnoticed.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#172

Post by Double_a_92 »

bsaul wrote: post #3
treydey wrote: post #2

Can anyone explain the strategy like I'm 5? I'm confused by his answer.

Even weirder is the statement that the State that organized the lottery made more money thanks to them buying massive amount of tickets ( or maybe it was the publicity around the first newspaper article that triggered more interest, and so more participant in general ?)

The money was "stolen" from the person that would have won the jackpot. The maximum jackpot was just smaller, it didn't make a difference to the lottery who actually won that money. They could say that the jackpot will be split among everyone that has exactly one number right in the next round, and still make profit.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#173

Post by gexla »

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 think these people just didn't read the article. Given the state made money, it knew what the odds were. It seemed the only reason there was an investigation was to see the real world outcome of how the game was setup. What may be more remarkable is that the state didn't have the analytics to notice this trend before-hand.

The title is misleading. There was no loop-hole. There was simply a structure of the game and the people in the article were able to exploit that structure. They were playing the same rules as everyone else. Buy tickets. They just figured out the right time and the right volume for buying tickets.

I don't know how the lottery works, but I imagine he also got a bit lucky. Apparently there wasn't enough people who caught on to the trick to significantly put a dent in his game. He was also lucky that the game wasn't popular enough to prevent triggering the roll-downs. Playing just 7 times a year even over the course of 7 years isn't a great sample size to account for long term variance. I wonder if there was a chance he could have lost money on some plays.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#174

Post by gexla »

MegaButts wrote: post #153
rwc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishing the odds is common. Doing the math on those odds apparently is not.

But in order to publish the odds, you have to know the odds. And the only way to know the odds is to do the math, correct? Unless you're making a distinction for determining the odds during optimal play (which makes a lot more sense to me).

I took his comment to mean that players doing the math isn't common. The operators know the odds and they publish those odds. Players often don't care what the odds actually mean (doing the math) and they'll play anyways.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#175

Post by taneq »

p1necone wrote: post #149
p1necone wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's naive to value a lottery based solely on your monetary expected value. The value of money doesn't increase linearly, and isn't the same for everyone. $20 could have an inconsequential effect on my quality of life, while winning say $2 million could be a total life changer. Likewise, the difference in impact between winning $0 and winning $2 million is likely a lot larger than the difference between winni…

Personally I like to think of lotteries as a binary thing - either I win enough money to retire now, or I don't.

I think there's more nuance than that. Winning enough to pay most of your house off wouldn't necessarily let you retire but it'd make you a lot more comfortable, for instance.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#176

Post by seventhtiger »

I was wondering how both these syndicates and the state we winning. I think I understand now.

Lotteries are zero sum games so no extra money is being created. All ticket purchases either go to the state or the winners. So if the players have a positive return how can the state also be winning?

The players have a positive return only for the rollover round. The players have a negative return for all other rounds, where the state makes its money, and the syndicates don't play.

So the people who lost are all the suckers who played in non-rollover rounds.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#177

Post by treydey »

kickopotomus wrote: post #128
treydey wrote: post #2

Can anyone explain the strategy like I'm 5? I'm confused by his answer.

It might make a little more sense with the numbers. WinFall was a typical lottery game where you choose 6 of 46 numbers[1]. As with most lottery games, there is a jackpot payout but there are also payouts for matching 3, 4, and 5 of the numbers. The odds breakdown goes like this[2]: Result | Odds ------------- 6 of 6 | 1 in 9,366,819 5 of 6 | 1 in 39028.41 4 of 6 | 1 in 800.58 3 of 6 | 1 in 47.40 2 of 6 | 1 in 6.83 T…

This is what I was looking for! Thanks.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#178

Post by astura »

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…

The house always wins, the lottery didn't lose money during the rolldown, nor any other time. Quite the opposite.

They also did notice.

https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/this-couple-found-a-math-...

>And, there was also the fact that lottery officials in Massachusetts had started to figure out that the Selbees and the MIT students had identified an advantage, but had done very little to combat it.

>"How do I become a member of the [Selbees'] club when I retire?" one lottery official joked in an email that later became public.

Re: Couple wins millions using lottery loophole

#180

Post by robujohnson »

ralusek wrote: post #136
maxxxxx wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-(

That final 7x increase to the odds is the one that makes it not worth your while?

If you want to win life-changing money, why not take the better odds?
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