Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 107 posts

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#91

Post by eftpotrm »

patio11 wrote: post #76
eftpotrm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a solvable problem. OK, database geek hat on here. It's not too hard to pregenerate a set of every possible ticket combination, just lots of cross joining of numbers tables and a bit of coding of the play rules. Add in the payout rules and you can produce a total set of all possible cards along with the payout for each given card. From this set, we can select exactly the number and balance of paying and no…

I don't think you've done the math yet on how many possible ticket combinations there are. I have more reason than most people to spend time thinking about bingo math. Get out a piece of paper and run some calculations: enumerating the whole solution space is not feasible. Anyhow, the real solution is easier: checking a bingo card or lottery ticket for any feature you want is, essentially, O(1). Generating a lottery…

I'm a Brit (and not a lottery player) so not fully familiar with US state scratchcard lottery game mechanics :-) The longest odds straight lottery over here is 75m to 1 which is definitely enumerable, but if you say these cards get into the billions and would crash my server then I'll believe you! Agreed that you can still generate a controlled prize distribution with random tickets generated individually rather than pregenerating all combinations - it's a bit more fiddly but perfectly doable.

All this I agree won't help if your card design is as poor as the original article was, but to address the complaint of the poster before me it's perfectly possible to randomly generate tickets while controlling the number of winning tickets - you just have to have a screening function which prevents more than your controlled number of winners making it through.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#92

Post by JacobAldridge »

patio11 wrote: post #80
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except "counting the cards" in the lottery version is trivial compared to doing it for real. Like the article said, he taught it to his eight year old daughter.

Right: that is the perfect target for the math abilities of the average lottery player. Do a controlled loss on one game, receive PR bonanza and watch as millions of lottery winners learn how to "outsmart" the lottery, introduce Game 2 with the same mechanic and cards which are countable in a fashion which is not exploitable, and watch as ticket sales soar. This would be evil, of course, but if you're running a lotte…

Not just poor people. The stoopid as well.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#93

Post by chopsueyar »

daeken wrote: post #29
VladRussian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>not find that the statistician had been threatened with prosecution or similar may be because he is in Canada. Do they have DMCA alike?

The DMCA only applies to mechanisms which protect copyright.

The winnings could have been used to buy bootleg DVDs.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#94

Post by chopsueyar »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #64

It seems that a large part of the problem (aside from flawed algorithm) is that they allow people to pick the tickets they want to purchase. If they required people to buy the tickets in order they're dispensed from the roll it would bring the abuse down dramatically. Even if you were able to crack the code you'd have to wait for others to buy the losers before a winning ticket would show up. The flaw in this would b…

The only way this could work in the US was if the store was in on it. Returning unused tickets for a refund would not be succesful.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#95

Post by chopsueyar »

nfriedly wrote: post #56
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…

That is how Florida does it.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#96

Post by joeycfan »

I live in Ontario and it never even occurred to me to check the scratch tickets for that sort of weakness as I figured they have to have actuaries etc working for them and would never possibly be so stupid as to give information away like that right? RIGHT?

I also like the way this guy was in a position to pass on $600 a day...

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#97

Post by alcarter »

rottyguy wrote: post #10

Even though he knew the formula, at least where I buy lottery tickets, the person behind the counter gives you the ticket. Assuming there are many more losers then winners, without being able to select the tickets yourself, it would seem as though it'd be a losing proposition. Now, if you were the store owner and had access to the tickets yourself, that would be a different story.

It's not only an issue of rarely having control over which scratch-off card you'd like to pick, there's also the issue of most states having the majority of their games almost entirely hidden. Very few games allow you to see numbers or letters plainly - most require to you to scratch off "your" numbers and then scratch off the "board" as well.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#98

Post by ultrasaurus »

ahlatimer wrote: post #83
Confusion wrote: post #43

I wouldn't have been surprised if they had known about the 'flaw', but didn't mind it, because, as Srivastava said "it wasn't worth the time to abuse the flaw". In similar vein, I once randomly generated 2 million out of 40 million possible codes. Consumers would buy products, obtain a code and it would allow them to 'buy one, get one free' for some other product. The code being short and without the usual mixup cand…

It wasn't economical for the statistician, since he was making more than he could possibly make doing this. It would likely be economical for many other people, however. He said he could make $600/day doing this. Even if you only do this 5 days a week and give yourself 2 weeks of vacation, you still end up making $150,000/yr ($600/day * 50 weeks/yr * 5 days/week). That's well above the national average for both the U…

Another key advantage is tax arbitrage. If you can make $800/day, that's because you have a certain skill set, you can't send a random college student in your place to collect your earnings for one month and pay almost no taxes. You have to pay your taxes on one $150k income.

With progressive taxation, if you get 12 students to redeem 1/12th of your winnings (for say 5%), you're paying taxes at the lowest level (likely even 0%) rather than the 35+% you would be if you had to claim 150k on a single tax return.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#99

Post by chc »

chopsueyar wrote: post #93
daeken wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DMCA only applies to mechanisms which protect copyright.

The winnings could have been used to buy bootleg DVDs.

This is sadly not too far off from the rationale behind Sony's DMCA attack against the PS3 hacker.

Re: Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

#100

Post by ultrasaurus »

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 just bought 3 Ontario Lottery Corp bingo cards to see if the pattern held and he gave me my pick and told me to take my time.
Post reply on HN