Massachusetts Lottery Broken

wiredog sends in a story about how knowledge of lottery rules and statistics has allowed opportunistic players in Massachusetts to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on tickets while being assured of a massive payoff. Quoting: "Because of a quirk in the rules, when the jackpot reaches roughly $2 million and no one wins, payoffs for smaller prizes swell dramatically, which statisticians say practically assures a profit to anyone who buys at least $100,000 worth of tickets. During these brief periods — 'rolldown weeks' in gambling parlance — a tiny group of savvy bettors, among them highly trained computer scientists from MIT and Northeastern University, virtually take over the game. ... Srivastava calculated that a gambler who bought 200,000 Cash WinFall tickets during four rolldown weeks in a year would win enough to cover the $1.6 million investment and earn a profit of $240,000 to $1.4 million — without ever winning the jackpot."

Comments

Wait, what?

[Jeng]

I thought the lottery was for those who were bad at math?

Re:Wait, what?

[Thud457]

Apparently Massachusetts thought that meant people who are bad at math should be running the lottery. A critical mistake in the state that's home to Stanford.

You all laughed when ....

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Guys, you were all laughing when I bought the lottery tickets from Dogbert 50% off. He assured me that the odds of winning are just one one millionth less, but the price was 50%, count them full fifty percent off. You guys were taunting me for buying the previous day's tickets. Ha! Who is laughing now?