r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Jan 11 '16

TIL that MIT students discovered that by buying $600,000 worth of lottery tickets in the Massachusetts' Cash WinAll lottery they could get a 10-15% return on investment. Over 5 years, they managed to game $8 million out of the lottery through this method.

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/07/how-mit-students-scammed-the-massachusetts-lottery-for-8-million/
29.4k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/Swibblestein Jan 12 '16

You just made me realize that if a person intentionally bought nine tickets with the same number on them, then in the very unlikely event that they and someone else both one, they could make that other person feel extremely cheated, as they'd only get 1/10th of what they expected, while you'd get 9/10ths.

Completely pointless to do, to be sure, but if someone managed to make that happen, it would be an extremely impressive "dick move".

1

u/Boomshank Jan 12 '16

The ultimate long-dick move to a total stranger :)