
Some people repeatedly win the Wisconsin Lottery. Do they play fair? - jrs235
https://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2018/03/some-people-repeatedly-win-the-wisconsin-lottery-do-they-play-fair/
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aj7
1\. I’m a straight and narrow physicist, who, by chance, made the acquaintance
of, and hung out with convenience store owners and assorted low lives. (There
was a point in my existence where I considered this aspect of lower middle
class culture exotic or titillating.) I would like to disabuse all the star
programmers and scientists who read Hacker News of any notion that the
economic subgroup cited does not have extremely intelligent members in
surplus, easily able to outwit state authorities in the crimes (and they are
crimes— statistics here are reliable) cited. 2. A key point of the article is
that the state’s revenue is not damaged by an unfair distribution of winnings.
Indeed, were it to become well known that the lottery was unfair, the revenues
do stand to be damaged. So there is zero incentive for the state to match any
sort of sophistication on the part of cheaters with the necessary
investigative prowess to catch them. 3. Most of the instances cited are clear
examples of convenience store employees being able to detect the winning
tickets in an undetectable way. This is indeed the case, and is well known in
the industry. The article, I conjecture, greatly underestimates the
sophistication of the detection methods. 4. I would guess that a majority of
multiple winners NOT connected with scratch-off pre-detection are associated
with various levels of money laundering. 5. There are times when it is more
propitious to play these moron games. But I would defy you to find a situation
where the odds are actually in your favor, i.e. where your expectation value
of winnings is not negative.

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logfromblammo
One could argue that scratch-off games are inherently unfair, because the game
provider already knows whether or not a ticket is a winner, and is hiding that
information from the purchaser. The method of hiding could be imperfect. The
odds calculations could have a flaw.

If you have any ambitions for cracking a lottery game, go for the small games
in states with unsophisticated gaming regulators.

In any case, playing scratch-offs successfully requires research into the
rules, which players hardly ever do. For instance, if the top prize for a
scratch-off game has already been won, you should _never_ play that game
again. If it hasn't been won, you aggressively sell those tickets to other
people, let them scratch, and then collect their non-winners for the second-
chance drawing. You can't rely on the odds on the back of the ticket, you have
to continually recheck the prizes won and recalculate the odds, and only play
when expected value rises above ticket cost.

And that ignores completely the possibility that convenience store clerks are
cherry-picking all the winners off the spool before you get the chance to
play. It's just not worth it for anyone, unless they cheat in some way.

~~~
DINKDINK
>One could argue that scratch-off games are inherently unfair

There's nothing inherent about scratch-off games that forces sellers to be in
a privileged position about whether tickets they are selling are winners. If
the buyer supplies a source of entropy that they commit to, the ticket has a
it's own entropy.

~~~
logfromblammo
The game provider knows the scratch-off ticket is a winner or a loser the
instant that it is printed. It now has to come up with some way to prevent
that knowledge from reaching _all the retailers_ in their distribution network
and _all the players_.

Every such scheme is potentially flawed and subject to attack. I reference the
McDonald's "Monopoly Game", that was subject to insider cheating for years
before it was discovered. Scratch-off tickets are subject to similar attacks,
as well as simple mathematical strategy attacks that transfer gambling
advantages from naive players to well-informed players, skewing the published
odds.

~~~
DINKDINK
>The game provider knows the scratch-off ticket is a winner or a loser the
instant that it is printed.

Yes, this is the way it works today but it isn't required by design. My reply
illustrates how you can have a "scratch-off" game where the game provider
doesn't know if the ticket is a winner when the ticket is printed.

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tnorthcutt
Related: [http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-
winners](http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners)

~~~
jrs235
Yep! That was discussed a bit on HN a few weeks ago and this I think juts add
more investigative info to it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16494280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16494280)

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dwighttk
The bit about second chance drawings... Are there rules about you having to be
the person who bought the ticket? I see discarded losing (I'm assuming)
tickets outside convenience stores all the time (maybe just in states without
those drawings.) It seems like it would be relatively easy to get $5 worth of
losing lottery tickets without spending $5. Especially while working at a
convenience store.

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ayemiller
The article suggests "micro-scratching" as a cheating technique. Wouldn't just
completely scratching off and re-applying the scratch material be the easiest
way to cheat?

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rtkwe
Reapplying and matching the original tickets covering well enough is probably
pretty hard to do and would probably require a larger investment into the
materials and equipment.

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deft
Wasn't there just an article on here about a retired couple exploiting a game
flaw with a purchasing pool? The lotto didn't care, it doesn't affect them. I
think it's more likely people found a flaw in the game than cheating / fraud.

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paulie_a
Anecdotal, but in my experience buying scratch offs in Wisconsin: The winning
tickets seemed to be "front loaded" into a new game with diminishing odds as
the game ages.

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frotak
[https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff-lottery/](https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff-
lottery/)

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alfonzo5819
You don't have to trick the state into thinking that the ticket hasn't been
tampered with, just the next person who buys a scratcher.

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Spooky23
This is why it shouldn't be possible to anonymously claim lottery prizes.

This is a pretty obvious path for money laundering and other forms of
corruption and fraud.

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rhino369
It shouldn't be anonymous to the state, but this isn't a great reason to
publish their names.

~~~
Spooky23
The state has no incentive to publish bad news.

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Erlangolem
In addition to the obvious scams and microscratching, I’d be surprised if this
wasn’t an avenue for organized crime to launder money. The store(s) get the
sales and a percentage, and the launderer gets clean money out of the other
end.

~~~
MrLeap
You're right about this. There is a market for buying winning lottery tickets
for more than their face value. Wonder why...

