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posted by janrinok on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-laugh-at-geeks! dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:02AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:02AM (#193994) Journal

    They're bright boys. Hopefully they're aware of these examples.

    Smartest guys in the room, or in the prison cell, as the case may be.

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