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Several years ago, while doing research for a school project, a group of MIT students realized that, for a few days every three months or so, the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country was Massachusetts' Cash WinFall, because of a quirk in the way a jackpot was broken down into smaller prizes if there was no big winner. The math whizzes quickly discovered that buying about $100,000 in Cash WinFall tickets on those days would virtually guarantee success. Buying $600,000 worth of tickets would bring a 15%–20% return on investment, according to the New York Daily News.
When the jackpot rose to $2 million, the students bought in, dividing the prize money among group members. But they didn't stop there; they were so successful in their caper that they were eventually able to quit their day jobs and bring in investors to front the money they needed to purchase the requisite number of lottery tickets.
Original Submission
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:47AM
Among the reasons there are so many successful casinos is that so many players have a poor understanding of probability and don't care. People don't play in casinos to make money, instead they get jobs that pay money. Responsible players budget an amount of money they are willing to lose, and they play for the thrill that they might get from winning some small amount of it back if they're lucky. A good understanding of probability would only cheapen the thrill.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday June 09 2015, @07:18AM
he knows the odds because he studied graduate mathematics at the U of Nevada in Reno, then took a job designing gambling machines.
Go hang out in a big casino at ten o'clock on a monday morning; I did once, I wanted to vomit.
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