Mass. Lottery knew about exploited game's flaws for years, IG says

This statement bothers me the most.

"a handful of math and science wizards, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology undergraduates"

This is not the first time something like this has happened.  All that is needed is the money to buy the tickets.

No advanced brain power required.

RL

Respectfully, I would say that aside from some here at LP, insiders in the Mass. lottery, and those few who were very mathematically inclined to

spot this games vulnerabilities; Advanced brain power was required, in addition  to bank rolling this scheme. 

Hindsight is always 20/20, and looking back now, it seems obvious to spot this abnormality. But back in the day, the wool was pulled over most

peoples eyes. If it was that obvious, and no brain power was required, there would have been thousands more doing this from around the country.

Looks like there will be another MIT movie like "21" except this one will be called "WinFall".

Good title! 

Respectfully, I have to disagree.  Playing any game in which the JP prize is rolled down to the lower

prizes once a certain level has been reached does not take any extra smarts.  This is the way the

game was designed to attract more players.   If my game rolled down and the prize for a 4of5 jumped

by a factor of ten or more times it's normal payout I would have to be seriously retarded not to jump in

on those drawings.  Someone with enough cash could jump in big time and by covering the second

level prizes could do very well and there is always the chance they could hit the JP.  By making such large

purchases they could force the JP over the 2 million limit prematurely off setting the onrush of common

players trying to take avantage of the games big payouts thus leaving them with the low probability that

someone else might hit the JP as their biggest gamble in which if it was hit they would lose big.  In every

market I know of the more you invest the bigger the expected return.  Their efforts would most likely increase

the payout for every prize paying ticket.  Ticket sales would be expected to increase for any roll-down drawing

which shows many people try to take advantage by playing bigger.   The lottery makes it's profit off the top

and since the odds were not changed then these people were just taking advantage of the prize increase.

What I would like to know is how many JP prizes they won playing at this level.     

RL

Obviously this game was designed and set up for periodic roll downs, and this was the major draw to the game. Any average player was aware

of this inherent game feature. The trick of course was all about timing your plays for when the roll down took place. Prior to the math and science

wizards, and M.I.T. undergrads analyzing and determining that large scale betting was in their favor, this was not common knowledge at the time.

 A third group of scientists, from B.U. & N.E. University who upon further analysis, concluded that not only was large scale betting in their favor,

but they were able to figure out a way to win nearly the entire jackpot! This discovery was not only unknown by anyone else at the time, but was

something even the lottery officials erroneously concluded was totally impossible!

Bear in mind these additional conclusions for how to nearly win the entire jackpot, were not revealed by some average player tweaking

on it at home in their spare time, but exclusively by some of the most brilliant mathematical M.I.T., B.U., and N.E. University students, professors

and scientists in the world.

To recap, all players were aware of the roll downs, and the huge potential for scoring multiple factors in secondary prizes. Agreed.

The huge breakthrough of monopolizing and nearly winning the entire jackpot however, came compliments of the think tanks from all the

above universities. Hence the reason I say, some major brain power had to be involved to take this game to the pinnacle of this blatant exploitation.

We will probably never be in agreement on this one, but at least we can agree to disagree. 

Megabucks Doubler is ok. I only do season tickets for that. Mass Cash burns a hole in my pockets but I want it thatway for now

mcginnin56

I guess I am just way ahead of the curve, I did not see anything that led me to think that anyone

with the money could have came up with the same methods.  I read something similar to this type

of play many years ago.  I don't see anything here that even points to the need for any advanced

fields of study. The lottery officals never considered someone would buy 80% of the tickets and the

rest is basic math. 

The whole purpose of my post was that things must be getting very bad. I would think that any of the

these super stars of academics would not think that splitting a few million dollars in however many ways

over a 7 year span would interest them much.  I can just see all these Brains filling out a few hundred

thousand betslips.  With all that brain power you would think they would have taken the time to and a

few bucks and built a printer that would mass print the tickets.  Who knows, they might have hired a few 

illegals to do it for them.   Maybe it took all that brain power to poor over all the data because they could

not believe it was that simple and wanted to make sure, who knows.   No wonder we have fallen so far

behind on the academics stage in math and science, our professors are all working on the lottery so they

can live like rockstars.  Stupid me, never thought of that one until now. 

RL

Sadly I guess, many of us are still behind the curve. One day, perhaps many years from now.......we will at least catch up to the curve.........

But never quite get ahead of it.   

Perhaps that is the real meaning of success in America, live rich, like rock stars  crash and burn, then die broke. The end.   

"The lottery officals never considered someone would buy 80% of the tickets and the rest is basic math."

The only thing unique is a small group came up with the $600,000 to make the bet and that's probably because credible math professors convinced them a profit could be made. I doubt the average lottery player who reached the same conclusion would get the same credibility to get the necessary funding.

Even though the same conclusion about the game was reach by LP members years ago, it would be very difficult to convince one thousand $10 a week QP players to risk $600 on one drawing to make a $90 or $120 profit and getting one hundred to "invest" $6000 would be impossible. Convincing four other people to contribute $120,000 each with an expected return between $18,000 and $24,000 is nothing more than good salesmanship even if the salesman has a doctorate in math.

"I can just see all these Brains filling out a few hundred thousand betslips."

At five lines a card that's 60,000 accurately filled out betslips. They make it look like it would take a math professor to figure out how long that would take and then figure out how long it would take to run them through a terminal. Those of us that filled out and played just 10 betslips several times could make a more accurate prediction.

After the Australia investment group tried to buy all the possible combinations for the Virgina lottery in the nineties and won its jackpot which was greater than the cost of buying the tickets, states were put on alert that there were those with unlimited funds willing to spend them if they could gain an profitable advantage in any game.  Most states changed their playing rules to limit the amounts groups or players could easily spend between drawings.  Looks like Massachusetts had those rules but made some adjustments to accommodate the big spenders.

"Any average player was aware of this inherent game feature. The trick of course was all about timing your plays for when the roll down took place."

IOW, it was easy to figure out. All you had to do was actually pay attention. Those "math wizards" at MIT didn't do anything but some simple statistical analysis. The relevant difference between them and the average person is that the average person wouldn't have done it. Being smarter and better at math was irrelevant in this situation.

Any idiot who pays attention can find out what the typical salesa re for most games. Once they know that much they can figure out how many tickets they'd have to buy to push sales to a certain point. The numbers are bigger, but it's the same arithmetic you learn in 2nd grade.

There are groups out there that play pick 5 games over the country when the jackpot reaches certain levels that make the return on dollar invested positive.  Usually when a jackpot is $575k or more on a 575757 to one odds game is the wagering of large amounts in the tens of thousands are justified. You are going to get back a minimum of 20% of your money bet hitting two and three out of five. You might have dry spells for a long time but over time and with big pockets you will come out a winner.

My question to bingo long is how was the tax situation handled. Obivoulsy claiming losers vs winners is very important. Banging out five playslips on one ticket is necessary to speed up the ticket buying process. It must have been a pain in the a$$ to keep track of those $10 tickets that would cash $2 etc. 

I applaud those that did this the lottery buying public should not view this as the game lacks integrity as each person with a ticket has an equal chance, but of course those with the most tickets have a greater chance.

The lack on intergrity in this country are the state governments advertising annuity and offering lump sum, or taxing winnings where we are already paying a tax in 50% takeout.  The lottery is a sucker bet ( just like any other bets with no edge)  Again I applaud these people for turning the edge in their favor.

If any idiots could have done this to exploit Cash Winfall of most of its jackpot, why weren't they???

The only guys taking advantage of this were the M.I.T, B.U. & N.E. University students, professors and scientists.

If these "idiots" from school could get away with it, why couldn't the likes of someone like yourself, or other similar type people?

The average joe's could have pooed their money just like the schools did, but this never happened.