
Gaming the lottery: How one winner used math to overcome the odds - abeaulne
https://hackernoon.com/gaming-the-lottery-how-one-winner-used-math-to-overcome-the-odds-71c8f688cedd
======
truncj
That was extremely unsatisfying. Great simplification and overview... then
skipped directly to a "conclusion"

~~~
brynsolomon
Thanks for the feedback - seems obvious in hindsight! Updated to include brief
'Results' section

------
aboutruby
1 May 2018:

"Soccer Pools is being AXED after paying out a $1.49 million prize because it
was the least popular lottery game in Australia"

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5677449/Soccer-
Pool...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5677449/Soccer-Pools-
lottery-began-1985-axed-months-paying-1-49-million-jackpot.html)

Also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotteries_in_Australia#Soccer_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotteries_in_Australia#Soccer_Pools)

------
zackkatz
The author lays out all the math and practical considerations and then…skips
to the conclusion.

Did he put it to the test? Seemingly not. And now that the methods are
explained, there will likely be too many other people trying this to make any
money from it.

This article is essentially a white hat hacker disclosing a vulnerability.

~~~
cbruns
He implied the buy-in was about 21k for one attempt with about 5-7% chance of
winning. Mocking up some quick analysis for a blog is one thing, taking out a
loan for 100k+ is quite another...

~~~
moftz
You can also split the cost of the 21k across many people. You walk away with
less money if you win but you also get a chance to play without selling a
kidney. The hard part wouldn't be the finding a fraction of the 21k but
finding enough people that would agree on the subset of 20 matches from the
overall 38 that you should bet on. Depending on what matches they have listed
for the week, you might even play a smaller subset than 20. If most of the
matches are strong teams vs weak teams, you stand a better chance than many
evenly matched teams. Although his data seems to suggest that splitting
winnings somehow results in even less winnings than you would normally think
so it really does seem to be that high buy-in is the best course of action.

------
ddoran
In the early years or Ireland's national lottery, a syndicate was
opportunistically assembled (1992) to guarantee a lottery win and positive
return on investment. They succeeded [1].

[1] [https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/how-a-secret-
syndicate...](https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/how-a-secret-syndicate-
managed-to-buy-the-lotto-35981173.html)

------
coldcode
Not much payoff for the article. Did it work?

But in a general lottery (random) it makes more sense to put $50 into a single
lottery than $1 in 50 lotteries. That's the only way to improve your chances.

~~~
thanatropism
Wait, what?

If there's any chance at all that the lottery does not draw from an
equiprobable distribution and some numbers are privileged - but you don't know
what they are, it's best to spread your bets to increase the chance that you
bet on the hot number by accident. This is true if a single number has any
edge eps>0\. Therefore you should almost always (with probability 1) spread
your bets.

------
xivzgrev
So let me get this straight..

$21k per play 5% chance winning = at LEAST 4m bankroll?

It’s still a fun read (except the ending) but that should’ve been near the top
to separate casual readers vs imma-get-rich-by-applying-similar-method
readers.

~~~
falsedan
400K, not 4MM

------
aritmo
Strange, can't connect to Https://thelott.com, that lottery website.

If there has been a recent change in the rules, then it would give credence to
the story. I did not see a comment yet on the post's website.

~~~
detaro
The _introductory paragraph_ mentions that the specific lottery was
discontinued.

