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Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

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Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#51

Post by aamar »

ynniv wrote: post #48
apalmblad wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like ticket design is the problem; an algorithm is needed that: - produces a set of bingo cards or tic-tac-toe boards such that only one board per card is a winner - produces cards that contain a number of almost winners Simply randomly assigning numbers wouldn't work, and it seems the method they've developed for building "fun to play" cards contains weaknesses against statistical analysis. Hmm... now I'll…

The solution is straightforward: generate truly random boards, evaluate them, and then use the set that fits your payout profile. The problem is that these boards will lack the enticing hooks that keep folks coming back. The complete solution is to also discard boards that are not enticing enough. The result will have fewer artificial patterns like the ones used in the article to determine winners.

That procedure is vulnerable to the same issues mentioned in the article.

Let's say you design a game that has outcomes Lose, Near-Miss, Win, and Invalid (tickets that must be suppressed, e.g. multiple wins). Then, imagine a rare, salient pattern, like 3 singletons in a baited-hook row. That might be an extremely rare occurrence in the overall lot of random boards, but it might still occur disproportionately in, or in the vast majority of, Win boards and Invalid boards.

If you then choose the Lose, Near-Miss, and Win cards randomly, in the desired proportion, from your truly randomly generated set, then the pattern will be statistically correlated -- potentially strongly -- with the Win cards. That's what the article describes.

A single confusing sentence in the article seems to have gotten a lot of people (including me, at first) thinking this had something to do with PRNG; rather, apalmblad's claim that this is a game design issue seems right.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#52

Post by datac »

bobds wrote: post #12

> "I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day." Or you could make an app for your smartphone that uses OCR to instantly tell you whether you are looking at a winning ticket.

App might last for few days in the App Store before it gets pulled out. Either way, it will be cool to create one.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#53

Post by rtghnyhjm »

nagrom wrote: post #3

My favourite line in the whole article was about the way he alerted the lottery board: "The package was sent at 10 am. Two hours later, he received a call from Zufelt. Srivastava had correctly predicted 19 out of the 20 tickets. The next day, the tic-tac-toe game was pulled from stores." I know that we're supposed to be fascinated by the statistical work done cracking the code, but my real sympathy is for the head of…

I'm very surprised that he wasn't arrested, prosecuted, served with an injunction not to talk about this and have all his computers confiscated.

The lottery commission in BC is on it's Nth major criminal investigation - but the trick here seems to be the simpler method of the shop stealing winning tickets from customers.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#54

Post by rtghnyhjm »

Luyt wrote: post #49
BrandonM wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem not solved. A savvy attendant just checks the tickets on the end of each roll. If it's a winner, go ahead and buy it. Otherwise, wait until a customer buys the loser first.

Disallow attendants to buy tickets while they're on the job. [However, they could signal accomplices to buy it for them. It would take a team, then.]

Most lottery tickets are sold from small convenience stores, either family owned or with just a couple of staff - hard to enforce this.

There is a crackdown on relatives of store owners winning the lottery - but is normally them defrauding winners who come in to check the ticket.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#55

Post by djb_hackernews »

golgo13 wrote: post #14

In Canada, are you able to say, "I don't want this one" until you get a potential winner? Here in Texas, you cannot pick your ticket. When you buy a ticket, you get whatever the cashier gives you or whatever the machine spits out. Or is the guy simply not wasting time scratching off the losers? I still don't see how this could be profitable since most games have 1:5 odds, including break even prizes.

I once bought a brick of scratch tickets, the only way I see this working is buying the brick, going through them and pulling out the winners and then selling the unscratched ones back to your friend convenience store clerk. There should be lots of tickets still attached to eachother, so they can be placed back into the hopper and removed as usual. When a "broken link" is encountered, it'll just look like the end of a brick.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#56

Post by nfriedly »

Xk wrote: post #2

In some states, the lottery accounts for more than 5 percent of education funding. Am I the only one who finds this ironic? Edit: Except, of course, for those who learn to predict 19 of 20 tickets correctly.

To make matters worse, my understanding is that when the state receives money from the lottery for the schools, that money does in fact go to the schools... and then an equivalent amount of money comes out of the school's budget and goes into the state's general budget.

So, for example: if the school budget for the year is $5 million, and lottery brings in $1 million for the school, the school doesn't get $6 million the way a lot of people seem to think. The school gets $1 million from the lottery and the state only has to pay $4 million out of the general budget.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#57

Post by patrickk »

bobds wrote: post #12

> "I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day." Or you could make an app for your smartphone that uses OCR to instantly tell you whether you are looking at a winning ticket.

Your comment reminds me of the great article that was on here some time ago about the guy who used a PDA and barcode scanner to search book stores for cheap books he could sell on Amazon for a profit:

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764895

A highly recommended read.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#58

Post by pbhjpbhj »

daeken wrote: post #31
BoppreH wrote: post #19

Why the hell didn't he hire people to find tickets for him? If you are worried about people doing this without you, just make an app to calculate the values. Make the calculations server side, and only after checking if the phone is registered. Just don't hire too many people, or the clerks may start to get suspicious.

Why not bring the clerks into it? The corner-store I go to near-daily knows me well, and they sell lots of lottery tickets. It'd be trivial for me to go in there and say "listen, I'll give you an X% cut in exchange for your silence and first pick of the tickets." However, if they're knowingly selling losers, could that be construed as fraud? Then again, the lottery does that already...

>However, if they're knowingly selling losers, could that be construed as fraud?

Yes, it's also clearly immoral.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#59

Post by splat »

nagrom wrote: post #3

My favourite line in the whole article was about the way he alerted the lottery board: "The package was sent at 10 am. Two hours later, he received a call from Zufelt. Srivastava had correctly predicted 19 out of the 20 tickets. The next day, the tic-tac-toe game was pulled from stores." I know that we're supposed to be fascinated by the statistical work done cracking the code, but my real sympathy is for the head of…

My favorite line:

"I found it hard to believe that only this tic-tac-toe game was flawed. What were the odds that I just happened to stumble upon the only breakable game the very first time I played the lottery? Of course, I knew it was possible that every other scratch game was totally secure. I just didn’t think it was very likely."

Spoken like a true statistician.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#60

Post by ashbrahma »

bobds wrote: post #12

> "I’d have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day." Or you could make an app for your smartphone that uses OCR to instantly tell you whether you are looking at a winning ticket.

Google Goggles can already solve Sudoku using OCR--http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/01/...

So what you are suggesting isn't that far fetched.

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