

The utter futility of scratch card games online with the UK National Lottery - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/02/utter-futility-of-scratch-card-games.html

======
corin_
Pretty much the case in any online gambling game, as soon as you part with
your money the server decides whether you've won, and then the game interface
can decide how you find out.

For example, Roulette on paddypower.com:

    
    
      <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
      <!DOCTYPE GameResponse SYSTEM "http://www.orbisuk.com/igf/dtd/GameResponse.dtd">
      <GameResponse>
    	<Header>
    		<GameId id="1155" ver="1" channel="I" />
    		<Customer>
    			<Account balance="1525.00" held_funds="0.00" ccy_code="GBP" adjusted_free_balance="No" ccy_decimal_separator="." ccy_thousand_separator="," />
    		</Customer>
    	</Header>
    	<Close />
    	<Play stake="600.00" win="1200.00" id="0" >
    		<BetState drawn="15" total_bets="1">
    			<Bet name="Outside_Black" stake="600.00" winnings="1200.00" seln=""/>
    		</BetState>
    	</Play>
      </GameResponse>
    

As others have pointed out, it doesn't make it any less fair. It does mean
you're wasting some time scratching to see numbers, or waiting for a roulette
ball to land, or waiting for cards to be dealt... but that's a choice the user
makes to make it more entertaining.

Personally, I love playing roulette/blackjack in a real (offline) casino - if
i just walked to the front desk, handed over the amount of money I was willing
to part with and asked them to randomly generate my winnings/losses, I
wouldn't ever bother.

And the same applies for online - I'd be far more likely to play an online
casino game as time-killing entertainment than as a way to make money.

~~~
eli
I guess it depends what you mean by "waste." It doesn't seem like it's any
more wasteful than the paper card.

~~~
corin_
You're wasting time in that the server could just as easily say "win" or
"lose" rather than making you spend that time pretending to scratch numbers.
It's no more wasteful than a paper scratch card, except that with the paper
scratch card the waiting is a necessity, whereas online it is not.

That said, my use of the word "waste" is not meant to be negative - they've
left that feature in the online version of scratch cards for a reason, because
they feel people prefer to have that time wasted - and, as I said, if playing
online roulette, I would rather waste time seeing a ball roll around than just
being told if I had won or lost.

~~~
eli
The paper card could just say "win" or "lose" too.

~~~
corin_
And those cards are available - but there will always be an element of time
wasting due to the fact that paper cards _need_ to make you scratch away,
whereas online versions do not.

------
jkent
_In playing this Game, Players acknowledge that it is a game of chance, that
the outcome of a Play in the Game is pre-determined by the Interactive System
at the point of purchase, and that the winning of a Prize in the Game does not
involve the exercise of any skill or judgement by a Player._

It does say this fairly clearly - although the author is correct in that by
determining the outcome on the server side means that even if the game isn't
completed, you can still be credited for the win.

There is even an option to bypass scratch card play and get the prize
immediately ( _Reveal Instant Wins outcome automatically._ )

There isn't really much skill involved offline (compared to none online). That
being said, I wonder how many people don't spot winning prizes when they buy a
ticket in the store - if I find a ticket, I might check!

~~~
rmc
_In playing this Game, Players acknowledge that it is a game of chance, that
the outcome of a Play in the Game is pre-determined by the Interactive System
at the point of purchase, and that the winning of a Prize in the Game does not
involve the exercise of any skill or judgement by a Player._

That part is almost certainly to comply with gambling licencing laws. There
are different laws if it's a game of chance or luck. That's why many raffles
(a game of chance) have a really simple question at the end, to turn it into a
game of skill, legally.

------
rlivsey
This is the same as any online gaming site.

I used to work for Victor Chandler [1] and there's basically a small number of
companies who supply the games to all the different gaming sites. NetEnt [2]
and Playtech [3] are the two which I can remember.

There are hundreds of games available, but they are all basically the same
with different skins. The spike in traffic when a new game comes out always
surprised me, people wanted to play the new SpiderMan game (or whatever) even
though it's exactly the same as all the others, just with a different colour-
scheme!

At the point where you start the game, the outcome is already determined, it's
just a case of going through the motions until it informs the player. Whether
that's scratching numbers off, watching a virtual horse-race etc...

It's heavily regulated though, much like fruit-machines/one-arm-bandits there
is a percentage payout which needs to be satisfied, so it's no more a scam in
that sense than buying physical scratch cards which they have to ensure a
certain percent win each of the prize levels.

[1] - <http://www.victorchandler.com/>

[2] - <http://www.netent.com/>

[3] - <http://playtech.com/>

------
motters
It was often said when the National Lottery was first introduced that it's a
"tax on the stupid". It's easy to see how it preys on the poor, and I've seen
this first hand. When you're poor life is mostly an unhappy slog from one
highly precarious situation to the next, and an infinitesimally small chance
of winning even modest amounts of money seems attractive because it would mean
at least temporary respite from life under a low upper bound.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...a "tax on the stupid". It's easy to see how it preys on the poor..._

This is a sentiment I hear often. Yet whenever one suggests that "stupid"
might apply to more than just the lottery and might even be a cause of "poor",
one is treated as an evil and unsympathetic person. It's a dichotomy I can't
wrap my head around.

A question: do the poor actually live in a precarious situation in the UK? I
was under the impression that the UK has extremely generous handouts which
made working more or less optional for many people. (This is a genuine
question, I don't know how the welfare state works in the UK beyond vague
American stereotypes.)

~~~
motters
I've seen life in a fair amount of detail in some of the poorest areas of
cities in the north of England. In these areas life is very precarious indeed,
crime and vandalism are a daily phenomena and educational opportunities are
minimal. Looking at how kids in these areas are raised its very easy to see
how they have a systematic disadvantage when they become adults and compete
with the rest of society.

The idea of a "tax on the stupid" comes from the point of view of people
living comfortably. If most of your basic needs are met then gambling money on
the lottery seems like irrational behavior (throwing your money away when you
only have a small income to begin with).

~~~
yummyfajitas
_If most of your basic needs are met then..._

From _delirium's comment, it sounds as the poor do have most/all of their
basic needs met, though he doesn't address policing. Piecing together your
comment and his, it sounds as if the only basic need the poor have which is
not met is adequate police protection. Is this correct?

Your sentence ending in "comes from the point of view of people living
comfortably" implies that from the point of view of someone else (presumably a
person living in a crime-ridden neighborhood), the lottery is not irrational.
Could you explain why, if that is indeed what you meant?

(Note: I actually do live in a crime-ridden neighborhood. But I'm also a 6'6"
man who looks like he has nothing worth stealing, and I've only been the
victim of a single, unsuccessful, attempt at robbery. So my point of view
might be atypical.)

~~~
imajes
There are other things unmet: for example, support in career progression,
clothing, etc. Again, this is fine for a short period (as it was designed for)
but imagine living for a year on benefits, where there simply isn't any budget
for new shoes, or any kind of enrichment opportunities.

------
jswinghammer
I'm always surprised people put up with the lottery given how it's easy to
verify who is buying tickets. If you care about the poor why give them such an
easy outlet for spending their money? If you care about morals why let people
gamble so easily?

I routinely see people in my neighborhood spend more than I could imagine
spending on any one food item in a month on lottery tickets. It's never the
upper middle class people around here that do it but rather it's always the
poor. The government even sells $20 cards just to let them part with their
money faster and more efficiently.

I don't really have a problem with gambling but given how what I'm describing
isn't really new analysis I wonder how those who claim to want to use
government to help the poor allow this. It just seems like a naked grab for
tax money on the part of the politicians.

~~~
PaulJoslin
I had a discussion with a colleague of mine recently regarding this exact
point. It all comes down to hope and the chance to change things.

If for example, you have a steady job and you earn enough money to pay all
your bills and save / spend an amount of money per month, then you will be
content to the fact if you save for a few months you can afford that 'thing'
you desire.

If however, you are technically poor or your job barely covers the cost of
living, then you know that things will not change as they currently are and
you will not be able to afford that 'thing' you desire however long you work.

In the second situation, the opportunity or hope that comes from gambling
seems an adequate risk to achieve the money they want to buy the 'thing'.
After all, occasionally their gamble will actually pay off and solve their
problem temporarily.

Unfortunately, the downside / reality is that often is the case, the poor get
poorer by wasting money on things like scratch cards.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Your threshold theory of utility is interesting. In mathematical terms, it
suggests [1] poor people have a utility function which is flat up to some
critical value (and this critical value is considerably higher than their
possible expected income).

For example, U(I) = sqrt(I/$15k), i < $15k, U(I) = 1, $15k < I < $100k, and
then U(I) = 2, $100k < I. (I is income. The discontinuity at $100k is not
necessary, but the flatness on [$15k, $BIGNUM] is.)

I.e., consider a poor person making $15k/year. If they spend $100/year on
lotto (assume 1 in 1 million chance of winning), with virtually no chance of
success, that suggests that 1e6 x Utility(big 'thing') > Utility($100 worth of
goods/services). In particular, this suggests that the poor person assigns a
very low value to an extra $100 worth of goods and services. If this is the
case, then the lottery is actually a very efficient tax! It only deprives
people of something they barely care about at all.

If correct, this theory would also explain why poor in the US work so little -
they don't value the things that the extra money could buy.

[1] Like PaulJoslin, I am implicitly assuming that lottery ticket buyers are
rational and inferring their utility function from their choices. It's also
possible that lotto buyers simply don't understand probability, in which case
all this speculation is irrelevant.

~~~
Markku
I spend a tiny amount on lottery every week (almost minimum). The reasoning is
like this:

    
    
      - If I never win, there is no practical loss (total spent sum too low)
      - If I win the jackpot, it's life changing
      - If I never play, life never changes (or at least there is not such a chance).
      - Most of the spent money goes to charity anyway
    

Why not play then? :)

~~~
jules
Because the probability of winning is so overwhelmingly low that even though
the total sum you spend is small, it's a net negative for almost anyone. If
you have a rare disease and need $1M in a month to cure you and die otherwise,
then it might be a good deal.

~~~
corin_
But if it's a net negative that you don't notice...

I never buy lottery tickets or scratch cards (though I love sports betting and
casinos), however my father does buy a lottery ticket every week.

He's retired, and has enough money to live fine - he owns the flat he lives
in, he has enough money to pay for his £100/month TV/internet package, to
smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, and to buy whatever food he fancies without
thinking about what's cheaper to eat.

He has a choice of living like that and accepting that's how the rest of his
life will remain, or spending a tiny amount each week and having a dream of
becomming a millionaire. He's not an idiot, he knows the odds are against him,
but his buying lottery tickets doesn't have any impact on his lifestyle, and
it lets him imagine that one day he might win big.

He wouldn't notice any difference in his financial situation if he stopped
buying the tickets, so really the only downside is that, if he keeps buying
them over a twenty year period, the inheritance that comes to myself and my
two siblings when he dies will be a bit less. But if you think that way, his
quitting the lottery would make a far smaller difference than if he didn't
subscribe to extremely expensive sports channels, if he didnt spend £40/week
on cigarettes, and so on. I'd far rather see him enjoy his money than save it
for my sake - I'll get by fine either way.

Sure, for some people the amount they spend on lottery tickets does take away
from money they could spend on other stuff, but there are people who are well
off enough to be able to afford the cost, without being so well off that
winning the lottery isn't a dream they enjoy having.

~~~
imajes
And that's the point of it. But like any other similar thing, it can be an
addiction, and when you consider choosing between the lottery or a meal this
week, there's a problem needing addressing.

------
PaulJoslin
I discovered this myself a year or so back when I had some money left in my
lottery account from a small win. It soon became clear that 'wherever' you
scratched would cause the same result and to test my theory, I scratched the 4
of the 5 panels off - then refreshed the game (which reset the grid, but
loaded against the same unique game ID) and I scratched off a completely
different set of 4 panels to reveal the same 4 numbers in the same order.

The laughable thing with this is that they have a whole array of games, which
each require the user to do different meaningless activities, which serve no
purpose other than waste time.

I guess the 'average Joe' may feel cheated, if they paid £1 and instantly got
a message saying 'You lose' - with no form of 'entertainment' or interaction.

Either way, it appeared to me as quite a horrendous scam and scandalous for
such a reputable company as Camelot. What would be interesting, is to know how
many times it pays out the jackpot amount of that card (if ever).

~~~
adam-a
From the National Lottery site:

    
    
      There is a 1 in 4.49 overall chance of winning a Prize on each Play of the Game. The Expected Prize Payout Percentage for this game is 64.08%.
    

They are required to publish the odds and they are correct. There is no scam.

~~~
PaulJoslin
The question of 'a scam' wasn't relevant to the chance of a win.

It was questioning how often it would pay out the jackpot of the challenge.

A pub fruit machine for instance has stamped on it, 'this machine will pay out
78% of all money taken' - that is the reality, it will return a proportion
back in winnings and take 22% as profit. However, it does not disclose how
this will be returned to the user or over what time frame.

In the scenario with these online scratch cards, if you play them for a while
you will end up down on your money (as you would expect for a 1 in 4.49
chance) - but occasionally get a small win which regains a proportion of the
money you have spent.

\- The question is, how often and what are the chances that if I play the game
long enough I will win that advertised £100,000 prize? - That information
afaik is not disclosed.

~~~
adam-a
1 in 2,880,000 for the top prize of £77,777, this is again clearly printed on
the site. I still don't see how you can regard this as a scam, unless you want
to classify all gambling as such.

~~~
jerf
For a given level of intelligence for a given person, it is possible to write
a set of rules that make it appear that you have a reasonable chance of
winning when in fact you don't. This is not a slam against the poor or the
stupid, it is true across all levels of intelligence. The lotto gets a certain
set of these people. Penny auctions step it up to the next level. Bernie
Madoff caught another even higher level. (Yes, he committed fraud, but there
was actually enough information for anybody paying close attention to figure
it out with high confidence; his payout schedule was far too consistent,
especially as the market started to drop yet his fund appeared to be immune.)
No amount of intelligence will render you immune, though, there's always
another layer of trick that would catch you, too, so let me emphasize again
this isn't disguised elitism, everyone's vulnerable.

To the extent that the lottery appears to be disproportionately played by
those who seem to be below the lottery's intelligence line, it is arguably a
scam. And I do mean _arguably_ , not that I have a proof. But I would say that
if your response is that people know what they are getting into, I would
submit that A: no, they don't necessarily really _get_ it and B: would you be
so blase if you were scammed by something a bit more sophisticated? It's easy
to be unempathetic and be unable to imagine being fooled by the lottery's
statistical games, but clearly it does in fact happen.

Is this proof of immorality or proof it should be shut down or anything else?
No, I'm deliberately constraining myself to just the point above. Drawing it
out further would take more logic and would itself be controversial. I just
want to make the point that there is a plausible way to look at this situation
and call it a scam without too much damage to the term.

------
simias
Isn't that a "Schrödinger's cat" kind of situation? As long as you don't look
into the box (or in this case, into the TCP packets) the fact that the outcome
is predetermined or not doesn't make any difference. Anyway, disregarding
that, these games are always futile statistically-wise.

~~~
adam-a
Exactly, it doesn't make a difference to your chances whether the game picks
your numbers before you scratch them or after. If they did it the way the
author would like it would just mean server requests for every revealed square
and session tracking etc in case of lost connections.

What's kind of interesting is games like Pachinko, which in real life rely on
the random fall of steel balls over metal pins. A game like at
<http://games.ladbrokes.com/en/games/arcade/pachinko> actually sends you the
number of wins and losses when you place your bet, then you get to watch all
the balls fall into their predetermined slots at the bottom of the board. You
even get to pick the power of the shot for each ball so it's very deceptive.

------
mwg66
Ironically, I noticed this about two years ago but concluded it wasn't
actually a big deal. They are pretty clear that it's a game of chance - not a
game of skill. And analogous to actual scratch cards.

~~~
lysium
It's almost analogous to actual scratch cards: while on actual scratch cards
the printed numbers are given, online the order in which the ('printed')
numbers appear is given.

~~~
mwg66
Yes. In any case, it's not a big deal. If it was any other way, we all would
have hacked it by now.

------
Luc
As long as the server is playing it fair and sending over the expected amount
of winners, I don't think there is a material difference.

~~~
lysium
It's actually pretty analogous to actual scratch cards, as mwg66 pointed out
here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2174506>

------
pbhjpbhj
I'm interested in how they handle failed communications - presumably they
don't charge you if the page doesn't get sent to you?

Could you have a purpose built browser that receives the packets up to

 _<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> <ticket> <outcome prizeTier="14"
amount="0_

and buffers them all, possibly while returning a fail code, and then only
returns the acknowledgements that the packets are received if that last figure
is positive?

Presumably they handle this sort of thing, curious how they do it? Is it
simply that if they can't send the page you still have to pay - could they
then be successfully sued if your connection is down or theirs doesn't
actually deliver the packets but you're still charged?

This last scenario would appear to fit into the sale of goods act in that
you've paid for a service (a scratchcard game) but the game wasn't delivered
...

Curious.

Clearly if I was a black-hatter I'd just try it out ...

------
JonnieCache
This video sums up my attitude to the national lottery:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3JwS4RcYyk>

A tax on poor maths skills.

EDIT: To expand, there is a cognitive dissonance here: although this is still
fair, you still have a chance at winning, we feel instinctively that playing
the game is futile.

This raises deep questions of philosophy. What if this same thinking is
applied to everyday life? If you believe that we live in a deterministic
universe, then we are all just futile scratchcard junkies, forever diligently
scratching the silver stuff off the face of the universe, innocent of our
predetermined (and probably crappy) destinies... If you believe in determinism
and don't want to kill yourself, you have nothing to say to scratchcard/online
gamblers :)

And _don't get me started_ on Deal or No Deal.

------
lysium
It would be utterly futile, if you'll _never_ see a winning scratch card.

However, the fact that the 'randomness' has already taken place when you
receive your card (vs. happening while you scratch), makes no difference
concerning your chances to win or loose.

~~~
_delirium
It's an interesting psychological issue that comes up in AI sometimes. There's
a certain cachet to something being "online", in the sense that it's literally
generating something on the spot, even if it's with a fairly simple process.
But consider this transformation: take a generative art piece, pre-generate
100 billion output instances, throw them in a big database, and then the
online code is: randomly select a piece of art to show the viewer. No actual
practical difference, as long as you've pre-sampled so many instances that the
user could never reasonably see any repeats. The space of variation is the
same; in terms of what you get out it's just as generative as before, just
with a different choice on the typical algorithmic time/space, online/offline
tradeoffs. But the rhetoric is a much harder sell.

------
ZeroGravitas
Is this different from actual physical scratchcards? Are they even allowed to
be games of skill? I thought the scratching was just a distraction to allow
you to reveal whether you had a "lucky" ticket or not?

~~~
raimondious
Nope – in the US at least, you don't even need to scratch the cards. Some
stores have scanners that can tell whether the card is a winner or not and pay
out if it is.

------
amalcon
This is generally true of offline scratch games, too. As soon as you purchase
the ticket, the outcome is determined. There is no way for you to manipulate
the ticket itself and turn a loss into a win.

If you can get information from the ticket, you might be able to identify
which tickets are winners, but this won't turn a loser into a winner.

------
praptak
I've read an article about the physical fruit machines doing a similar thing.
The outcome of the "guess whether the next number will be bigger or smaller
than current one" is pre-determined. The game knows how many positive guesses
it allows and adjusts the numbers accordingly.

------
markessien
It's like a movie: instead of sitting down for two hours in front of the
screen, after buying your ticket the seller could just tell you what happens
at the end. There, you just saved yourself two hours of time you could spend
productively.

------
halo
I was under the impression that this is actually a legal requirement. That's
why roulette fixed-odds betting terminals in bookies spin before you gamble.

------
jules
What's worse, these kind of things sometimes don't even generate the numbers
randomly. They first generate the outcome they want (e.g. win $0.00), and then
they generate the numbers that produce that outcome. They sometimes don't even
generate the outcome randomly, but instead generate it in such a way that it's
impossible for the site to lose money.

