Absolutely AWESOME story, about "gaming" the lottery. Yes, it can be done.

[VirtualLarry]

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/

Shades of a Seinfeld plot, really. Turns out, the people behind the lottery, aren't always so smart, and there ARE some loopholes, at least, in some games.

 

[Greenman]

Boring article was boring. I quit half way through because the author still hadn't got to the point.
It could just be that it's early and I'm grumpy.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sorry, article is a bit long and meandering.

 

[SamQuint]

cliffnotes

Lottery game had a roll down feature. This meant if the jackpot rose above 5 Million and nobody won they would then roll down the rewards on the lower prizes. So if getting 3 numbers was worth 50 dollars the roll down would make 3 numbers win 100. So the amounts would would be higher on these lower prizes. So the guy waited for the rolldown and then bought crazy amounts worth of tickets like 18,000 to $100,000 worth. He would win tons of these smaller prizes but since the win amounts were larger it paid off.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What struck me, was an apparent similarity to crypotcoin mining.

 

[SamQuint]

Here is the interesting part. Not too bad.

The last time Jerry and Marge played Cash WinFall was in January 2012. They’d had an incredible run: in the final tally, they had grossed nearly $27 million from nine years of playing the lottery in two states. They’d netted $7.75 million in profit before taxes, distributed among the players in GS Investment Strategies LLC. Driving back home to Evart for the last time, the couple felt sad and frustrated. They’d known it could all end someday, of course, but they hadn't expected to be made out as villains. Almost anyone in their shoes would have made the same decisions. “If you figured it out and you could do this, would you do it?” Jerry would say later. “I’m just asking. Would you?”

 

[XavierMace]

That article is more than a bit long. However I thought this was fairly common knowledge? As that article mentions, it's basic math. The catch is you have to have a substantial amount of money to put in up front, nearly unlimited time to buy the tickets, and if somebody happens to win the big jackpot, you're screwed. Don't get me wrong 29% return on investment is pretty impressive.

 

[Skunk-Works]

Read the whole damn thing. What Huff Post wants you to know is that Capitalism is evil. And no shit! If you have 100k dollars to blow, you will win that much. I knew that when I was 10 FFS!

 

[SKORPI0]

Playing within the established rules of the game. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What struck me, was an apparent similarity to crypotcoin mining.

Umm.... what similarity?

 

[DaveSimmons]

That article is more than a bit long. However I thought this was fairly common knowledge? As that article mentions, it's basic math. The catch is you have to have a substantial amount of money to put in up front, nearly unlimited time to buy the tickets, and if somebody happens to win the big jackpot, you're screwed. Don't get me wrong 29% return on investment is pretty impressive.

So either a high reward or you lose your shirt. That does sound a little like cryptocoin gambling.

I think I'll stick with my index funds and getting rich slowly

 

[VirtualLarry]

Umm.... what similarity?

The manner in which most PoW schemes allocate coins once a block is discovered, is much like a random lottery, among all of the hashing participants, with those with greater hashrate (imagine, one hash, one lotto ticket) having a greater chance of hitting the coin jackpot for the block.

 

[DigDog]

http://highline.huffingtonpost

..aand that's more or less where i stopped reading.

 

[pete6032]

Umm.... what similarity?

Crypto mining is like playing the lottery. If you guess the correct input that gives the correct hash then you win the block of coins. There is no way to reverse solve the hash problem It's literally just brute force of guessing the correct input. Whoever has the most computing power and resources can make the most number of guesses and has the highest likelihood of guessing the correct input and winning.

 

[Fenixgoon]

interesting article. i enjoyed reading it.