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How MIT Students Won $8 Million in the Massachusetts Lottery

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

ticho writes:

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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:55AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @03:55AM (#194363)

    Add MDC to your Foes list. In your account preferences set the Foe mod to -6. Read at a threshold of 0 or higher. Voila, no more MDC comments!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @04:04AM (#194366)

    I use the Foes list to keep track of people who I think are dumbasses that way I can judge what they write - if they should or should not get the benefit of the doubt when they post something that sounds kinda stupid. So I can't make it do double-duty as a killfile.