Fuck scratch-off lottery tickets

The BBQ Pit
101

Another potential scheme outlined in the first article:

And apparently there’s some evidence that some games might have been broken and taken advantage of, based on the distribution of prizes claimed. The break-even winning tickets are being claimed at a rate below what they should be while the bigger prizes are being claimed at a higher than expected rate. The speculation is that any money launderers or other cheats would not bother with break-even tickets and would focus on stealing the bigger prizes.

The lottery security folks he tipped off didn’t pay him any attention until he sent them an envelope with 20 unscratched tickets, ten of which he guessed would be winners and 10 of which would be losers. He was right for 19 out of 20 tickets and they called him 2 hours after getting his package and pulled the game from the stores the following day.

They explain in detail his method for how he could tell if tickets from the first game he cracked would likely be a winner. It’s something we was able to teach to his 8 year old kid.

It’s an interesting article.

102

I was answering this question:

But never fucking mind. I’ll make sure not to bother responding to you in the future.

103

My point was that there’s no way an individual can game the system without finding a cooperative retailer or being a retailer themselves. You might be able to sell back a few unscratched tickets, but do it regularly while also regularly cashing in winners and people will quickly be suspicious.

104

My sincere apologies. I don’t know where my head was. It was late, I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t sleep. You did nothing to deserve that snippy response.

105

Thanks man, I really appreciate that. And apologies from me for my reaction. We’re good, like it never happened as far as I’m concerned. Hope you’re feeling better.

106

Here’s what you do.

Go to the supermarket, mini-mart, where ever, where they have a machine that sells lotto tickets. Usually there’s a little table there where people can scratch off their newly bought ticket, and a trash can where they can throw the losing ticket away.

Dig through the trash can and recover all the losing tickets.

Here in CA, at least, there’s a second chance game on tickets. Rub off the serial #, enter it on the lotto web site, and try for the second chance prize offer.

Relax safe in the knowledge that this time, you didn’t have to pay for the tickets that lost yet again. Instead, you only lost your dignity by digging through a trash can for spare change.

107

I wonder what the average payout is per ticket for the second chance drawings.

108

My brother won $7,000 doing exactly that. He had his 12-year-old son collect losing tickets, and they entered them every week in the second chance drawing. Eventually they hit the jackpot.

109

You just helped your state’s revenue stream.

110

I play them sometimes but not a lot. Just gamble small amounts of money that you don’t need. Somebody is going to buy the big buck payoff ticket. It probably won’t be you or me, but you never know. Ditto with slot machines, just play small amounts that you won’t miss. Sure, the odds in roulette and craps are better than the slots, but it’s possible to turn $50 into $100,000 in the slots or lottery tickets, not so much with roulette or craps. Want to turn $50 into $100, play the table games. Want to turn $50 into $100,000, play slots. Want to turn $10 into $250,000, buy lottery tickets. Just know in advance you’re probably going to lose.

111

Damn! This was what I was going to say! I always thought I came up with his strategy myself, but now I’m wondering if you posted it here before and I subconsciously stole it from you. (Or maybe I posted it here before and YOU stole it from ME!)

112

Hmm… My state has second chance drawings. What kinds of stores did he find the most tickets in?

I wonder if it’s technically illegal. There may be some fine print about “original purchaser or recipient” or something.

113

Every time I muse about winning the lottery, my wife points out that I never buy tickets. Despite walking her through my careful mathematical demonstrations, she still seems to think that this will somehow significantly affect my odds of winning. Pfft. Women.

114

As I recall it was mostly around convenience stores, and a lot of them were just on the ground.

Here are the second chance (called Replay here) rules for my state (New Hampshire). There doesn’t seem to be any requirement that the player must have purchased the original ticket.

115

The biggest prize I’ve ever won on a scratch-off – $25 in c. 1992 – (I don’t really play scratch-offs) was on a fully scratched-off ticket just outside a bar. For whatever reason, I decided to pick it up and look at it and had a $25 winner in my hands. It’s not like it was a complicated game, either. It was just one of those “scratch a box with six dollar amounts in it and if three match, you win that prize.”

116

Now that I think about it, I often see tickets on the ground around convenience stores and such. Statistically, if he won $7,000, then he must have gone through more than $7,000 worth of tickets. He didn’t pay for them, but assuming $1 a ticket that means collecting and entering more than 7,000 tickets.

117

I’d be surprised if they replayed that many, but it is possible, they did it for over a year. I suspect they just got lucky and beat the odds.

118

My state has a phone app for scanning in second chance codes so it could be done pretty efficiently. I won’t go out of my way but if I see any on the ground somewhere I may play them.

119

Serious question here: How does a half point spread bring in more bets?

My understanding is that “N-1/2” point spreads are done to insure that the outcome can’t be a push as it could be for any “N point” spread.

I can see how it would be to the book’s benefit if bets were returned on a push, there would be no winners to collect the vig from.

Or is it only 0-1/2 point spreads on sports where a tie is always resolved by extra innings or overtime? It that case I can see what you mean.

120

That is usually true but not always. Joan R. Ginther of Texas has won multi-million dollar scratch off jackpots not once, not twice but four times so far for a total of over $20 million. Maybe she really is the “luckiest woman in the world” like she has been dubbed but that seems extremely unlikely because the odds of that happening by chance are ludicrous. A better clue is probably that she also has a PhD in Statistics from Stanford but no one knows how she is doing it.

Meanwhile, those pesky MIT students were at their wacky antics once again back in Massachusetts. They figured out how to beat another type of lottery game based on the fact that it sometimes had a “rolldown period” when the jackpot got too large so the expected return from the lesser prizes actually became positive for a while. They managed to win $8 million over a few years exploiting that flaw (which has since been corrected unfortunately).

With all of the different state and regional lotteries out there, it is possible there are still a few with an exploitable flaw but you may need mad math skills and lots of time to find and exploit them.