Am I missing something here? Are these lotteries +EV in the first place? How does the lottery expect to make money if that is the case?
A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
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Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#22> Even if Mandel were to win, there was the possibility of multiple winners — a scenario that could significantly dilute the jackpot. In fact Mandel was not able to calculate the odds of multiple winners. With publicity about an outsized jackpot, the general public is also expected to buy tickets in larger numbers, making it hard to estimate the expected winnings. For that reason, I would not consider this to be gami…
> cheating the lottery
Isn't this a contradiction? Like only the lottery is allowed to cheat you?
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#23Am I missing something here? Are these lotteries +EV in the first place? How does the lottery expect to make money if that is the case?
They're not, generally, but if the stars align correctly, nobody will win the jackpot until it's gotten so large that buying every possible combination will - if you're the only winner - pay you more than the base odds. But then you're betting that you will have the only winning ticket.
I'll usually buy a few tickets if it hits that point. Cheap fantasy.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#24Am I missing something here? Are these lotteries +EV in the first place? How does the lottery expect to make money if that is the case?
The recent Powerball lottery prize was for $1 billion but there are fewer than 300,000,000 possible tickets. But like somebody else mentioned, there's always the possibility of multiple winners.
For the recent billion dollar prize, a single person won.
The prizes get huge because when there's no winner, the prize rolls over to the next drawing.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#25Am I missing something here? Are these lotteries +EV in the first place? How does the lottery expect to make money if that is the case?
They’re progressive jackpots, the prize pool increases until someone wins, at which point it resets. So a ticket for an individual drawing can be +EV if no one has won in a while, with the excess money coming from players in previous games rather than the lottery administrator.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#26Similar to the guy that bought a fighter jet from Pepsi but they reneged on their contract.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#27This might just be the best answer ever for that YC application question: "Tell us about a time where you hacked some system for your advantage?" Surely they would give this Romanian guy an interview based on this answer! /S
But did he really hacked it? Or just brutforced it?
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#28This might just be the best answer ever for that YC application question: "Tell us about a time where you hacked some system for your advantage?" Surely they would give this Romanian guy an interview based on this answer! /S
It took me a while to figure this out but I think YC are particularly looking for answers to that question that result in a win-win, ie where you hacked a system to your advantage, and to everybody else’s advantage.
The lottery is an explicit zero-sum game. So long as he didn't actually break the rules, I don't think YC would care. That said, the post-lottery financial maneuvers seem like a red flag.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#29Am I missing something here? Are these lotteries +EV in the first place? How does the lottery expect to make money if that is the case?
We call this "roll-over", when no-one wins so the pot accumulates. This week's draw doesn't need to be profitable, the overall scheme needs to be profitable.
Say $2MM in tickets are sold, putting $1MM in the pot. And no-one wins. So next week, $2MM in tickets are sold, putting $1MM in the pot - which already contained $1MM from last week. Continue this over a few weeks.
After 5 weeks you have $5MM in the pot - and another $5MM in profits. On week 5, $2MM in tickets could buy $5MM in winnings, but that doesn't mean the scheme is negative. It just means this week's draw looks like a good deal.
States love lotteries because the house cannot lose - their share is taken before it goes in the pot, so the pot is never a liability.
Re: A Romanian economist legally gamed the lottery
#30I wrote this comment the other day, about something similar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36766556#36768937 Like with trading systems, the thing that made it work here was not being smart about the maths. In fact anyone with high school maths would be able to work out when it was worth doing. The thing here was the audacity to try to put together a business around getting it done. Things like getting investor…
I’ve come to believe that this is a universal principle: disbelief regarding feasibility prevents actualization of vision; once one sees that it is done it is as if a mental barrier has been removed.