I haven't seen it. Sounds interesting but link is bad.




See if this link works.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

That was a great read. Thanks.

Thats awesome!!! I have often wondered and though about what would happen if you bought virtually every number combination when the jackpots get really high?I mean when it hits 300 million plus, just seems like you would make money, but of course how do you actually get every number combination manually?? I wondered if you just walked into the lottery office with 100's of millions in cash and said I want every number...

I want to play poker with Jerry...

That's why you were a lifeguard, and not a mathematician. Two things to remember: 1) the odds are longer than the payoffs, and 2) the jackpot is split among winners.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

That's why you were a lifeguard, and not a mathematician.//

That's funny, I had math and swimming scholarships offered when I left high school. So I guess you have calculated how much in "TOTAL" you would win if you had every single ticket??It is not just about the big payoff, although that would have to factor in. You could get lucky and be the only one winning the $500 million, but odds are you will split it. But then there is every other winning ticked and payoff, add that to your guarantee split or outright win of the jackpot, and I bet you have a winner most of the time...


And I also had a foolproof blackjack system, until I found out that tables had limits...)-;

You should read A Man for All Markets......... Ed o thorp

I had heard of him, guessing related to the grandfather of card counting in blackjack. I love how these guys minds work, seeing puzzles everywhere and then trying to beat and solve them..

My bright idea was not card counting, as it was already illegal by then. Mine was just a betting scheme, start with $2 and double your bet each time you lose, and then start over at 2 again after each win. I worked it out in my head that on a $500 limit table you had about 9 bets, on a1000 dollar one, roughly 10 bets. I thought to myself that certainly one cannot lose 9 or 10 hands in a row??

So on a very slow day at the beach(and foggy), I broke out a deck of cards and played many hours of blackjack. To my dismay, I hit 9 losses in a row within a couple hours, so had to abandon that strategy. But there is some limit table where you could get in 15+ bets, but that would be nosebleed stakes, and of course they would not let you start at 2, all to win 2 bucks each win. Then I figured out how many winning hands per hour you should expect, and it was more like a good hourly wage, not the millions these lottery folks tapped into...

Great article, thanks for sharing!

This part brought back memories:
"Knowing that people rolled up their spare change and cashed it at the bank, it had occurred to Jerry to buy these rolls at face value, hoping that the bank hadn’t opened and checked them. Jerry’s idea was that maybe bank customers, by mistake, had included certain rare and valuable coins along with the normal ones. Father and son would sit in front of the TV at night and rip open the rolls, searching for buffalo nickels and silver Mercury head dimes; they made about $6,000."

I was doing exactly this in junior high. The bank tellers were not very fond of me - I'd withdraw all the money in my savings account (maybe $100) and ask for it in rolled coins. The most lucrative for me were half-dollars; at that time I could still find a few 1964 and older coins (90% silver). But the real money maker was 1965-70 half-dollars - those were 40% silver and still fairly plentiful in those days.

I was doing exactly this in junior high. The bank tellers were not very fond of me - //

I did the same thing, only it was the 60's so silver was not yet so rare. I did it to fill out my coin collections, and get those old wheat pennies. And I remember finding silver certificates too. My 1/2 dollar finds were the liberty half, still some floating around, and the mercury dimes too... Fun times for sure, think I may have just found something to introduce to my over active 7 year old!!!

Most annoying part of the article was the Massachussets report (printed at bottom). The reality is that "rich" high-volume players weren't in fact "rich" except due to previously won bets. They effectively funded ever higher bets with "house" money. It is ludicrous to point to the revenue of $16M when the bulk of the $40M was taken from state payouts. The correct analysis would be to compare payouts/revenues with and without these high-volume groups. MA earned less money due to negative earnings during roll-out drawings. Math is sooo difficult for some people. BTW, I have no problem with folks legally gaming systems to make a buck. It is better when knowledge is so well-understood that all can equally benefit from a fairer playing field, and the more extreme instances of unfairness are shaken out of the system. Now, if you will excuse me, it's time to put $13K into my back-door Roth IRA....

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"They felt vindicated six months afterward, when the Massachusetts inspector general released his report on July 27, 2012. .... There was no evidence, wrote the inspector general, that the game had harmed anyone—not the small players, and not the taxpayers. Over seven and a half years, Cash WinFall had pumped nearly $120 million into state coffers, thanks in part to the manic ticket-buying of high-volume players like the Selbees. The large groups had bought some $40 million in tickets, $16 million of which was revenue for the state. And with the exception of the drawings in which the jackpot had been forced to roll down, the big players had not crowded small players out of the game or reduced their chances of winning. “As long as the Lottery announced to the public an impending $2 million jackpot that would likely trigger a roll-down,” read the report, “...no one’s odds of having a winning ticket were affected by high-volume betting. ... When the jackpot hit the roll-down threshold, Cash WinFall became a good bet for everyone, not just the high-volume bettors.”
The lottery had worked how it was designed to work. In fact, as one financial reporter for Reuters would argue in the days after the report’s release, Cash WinFall was possibly more fair than other lottery games, because it attracted rich players as well as poor ones. Instead of taxing only the poor, it taxed the rich too. "

The reality is that "rich" high-volume players weren't in fact "rich" except due to previously won bets. They effectively funded ever higher bets with "house" money. //

Ya, that was kind of cheeky by the authors, when in fact it was some old people, their family and friends, and a bunch of college kids at MIT mostly. It would have been too much work for an already rich person, these folks worked 10 hour days, seven days a week!!! It was not free money by any means, just a very good paying job...

When it was smaller some have tried. You have to do it in states that allow pre filled in forms and you need several people who can stand at several stores feeding the machines. I think someone was succesful at getting like 1/3 of all the numbers they were shooting I think for 50% but machines broke down and some store owners kicked them out, I believe they did hit the big lottery number. I am sure some googling could find the story.

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Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.

Maybe I don't recall statistics as well as I should, but based on the numbers presented in the article I don't get how it works.
If you have a 1 in 56 chance of winning $50 on a $1 bet, how do you come out ahead? Shouldn't you need to win more than $56?

Torrey,

The key to understanding this one is that when you buy one ticket it is worth the expected value of all winning methods COMBINED.

So the same $1 ticket is worth the expected value of it having only 3 matching numbers, PLUS the expected value of it having 4 matching numbers, PLUS the expected value of it having 5 matching numbers, PLUS the expected value of it having 6 matching numbers.

If that sum is greater than the original $1 bet (as it is in this case)… the bet is a winner.

You should read it. He is a genius who just happened to be interested in games

His real money was made in bond arbitrage I think

He started a fund in 08 and was up on the year..........

A very clever man who just happened to invent card counting

Anyone willing to provide the cliff notes for us w short attn spans?

They looked at the odds on a game during roll over weeks. Bought a shit load of tickets and made a killing

Got it. Thanks for the clear explanation.

That was a good read.

That wasn't a free lunch at all. They worked pretty damn hard on some mind numbing tasks to do it.

Granted, they only did it maybe once a month or so on average.

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