Old Man v MIT. Loser? Lottery

[RPM 26435]

Can't embed but this is great. Retired liquor/deli owner cracks the state lottery.... in 3 minutes.  In 2 different states! He was not told there would be no math.

But one morning in 2003, Jerry happened to walk back into the corner store and spotted a brochure for a brand new lottery game called Winfall.  Jerry always possessed what he calls, "a head for math." He has a bachelor's degree in the subject from nearby Western Michigan University. And in only a matter of minutes, he realized that this was a unique game.

Jerry Selbee: I read it and by the time I was out here I knew what the potential might be.  

Jon Wertheim: It did not take you weeks to suss this out?

Jerry Selbee: No, no, not at all. Three minutes.  

Jon Wertheim: Three minutes and you found the loophole in the state lottery?

Jerry Selbee: Three minutes. I found-- I found a special feature. (laughs)

 

Jerry Selbee: Here's one that was pretty successful. We played $515,000 and we got back $853,000

Jon Wertheim: It's about a 60 percent return?

Jerry Selbee: That was a good return. (Laugh)

 

Jon Wertheim: Michigan game gets closed down. How long before you realize there was a game in Massachusetts that also presented some favorable odds?

Jerry Selbee: One of our players emailed me and he said "Massachusetts has a game called Cash Winfall. Do you think we could play that?"

Jon Wertheim: I've heard that..

Jerry Selbee: And so I got on the computer. I looked at the game and once I researched it, I got back with him and I said, we can play that game.

Jon Wertheim: We got another winner. How long did it take you this time to figure out that you could get a positive return here?

Jerry Selbee: Ten minutes.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jerry-and-marge-selbee-how-a-retired-couple-won-millions-using-a-lottery-loophole-60-minutes/

 

Edited January 29, 2019 by RPM

[Nice Guy Eddie 13569]

Actually it doesn’t seem like the state lottery lost.  They earned their money, the losers were the people playing at full odds.   I would guess that many people noticed that their odds improved (it was the point of the game) so they bought more tickets but few at this level.

[housious 468]

I’m confused. How does the state lottery not lose if they are paying out more on average than they are taking in? Maybe I’m not understanding the game correctly. 

[SameSame 1712]

1 minute ago, housious said:

I’m confused. How does the state lottery not lose if they are paying out more on average than they are taking in? Maybe I’m not understanding the game correctly. 

I guess enough other players were losing enough to still have the state make a profit?  Not sure

And if that was the case, why stop the game.  Maybe they forecasted a tipping point.

[Guest Lobo]

They still won because Jerry played $515k and made $853k.  The rest of the state, who I think we can safely assume is not as good with maths as Jerry played in the millions of dollars and lost in the millions of dollars.  Lotteries will always work because I stopped to click on Jerry's story because I find him fascinating and because for every Jerry, there are literally millions and millions of people who think "this is their week."  Now what states do with the lottery money, that's another thread.  

[Wally Fairway 5610]

I'm pretty sure there was a thread about this last year (maybe on TOB)

Here is a much more in depth article about the Selbee's
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/

[Bat Guano 359]

6 hours ago, housious said:

I’m confused. How does the state lottery not lose if they are paying out more on average than they are taking in? Maybe I’m not understanding the game correctly. 

Because of the roll-down. It only happens if the jackpot reaches a certain level without a winner, and then that jackpot money rolls down to the lower-tier prizes, bettering their odds for the player. That means the money that goes to the roll down is from previous draws, which people bought over the weeks beforehand and for which there was no winner. State got its money then. Jerry played the lower prize tiers, and won in line with the odds. Not a damn thing wrong with it, and the state didn't lose a penny, you can be sure of that.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Bat Guano

[High Plains Drifter 11092]

he and Marge were willing to do the grunt work, which, as it turned out, was no small challenge. Lottery terminals in convenience stores could print only 10 slips of paper at a time, with up to 10 lines of numbers on each slip (at $1 per line), which meant that if you wanted to bet $100,000 on Winfall, you had to stand at a machine for hours upon hours, waiting for the machine to print 10,000 tickets. Code in the purchase. Push the “Print” button. Wait at least a full minute for the 10 slips to emerge. Code in the next purchase. Hit “Print.” Wait again. Jerry and Marge knew all the convenience store owners in town, so no one gave them a hard time when they showed up in the morning to print tickets literally all day. If customers wondered why the unassuming couple had suddenly developed an obsession with gambling, they didn’t ask. Sometimes the tickets jammed, or the cartridges ran out of ink. “You just have to set there,” Jerry said.

 

The Selbees stacked their tickets in piles of $5,000, rubber-banded them into bundles and then, after a drawing, convened in their living room in front of the TV, sorting through tens or even hundreds of thousands of tickets, separating them into piles according to their value (zero correct numbers, two, three, four, five). Once they counted all the tickets, they counted them again, just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. If Jerry had the remote, they’d watch golf or the History Channel, and if Marge had it, “House Hunters” on HGTV. “It looked extremely tedious and boring, but they didn’t view it that way,” recalled their daughter Dawn. “They trained their minds. Literally, they’d pick one up, look at it, put it down. Pick one up, put it down.” Dawn tried to help but couldn’t keep pace; for each ticket she completed, Jerry or Marge did 10.

 

I think I'll stick to craps.

[davidg 4042]

7 hours ago, Wally Fairway said:

I'm pretty sure there was a thread about this last year (maybe on TOB)

Here is a much more in depth article about the Selbee's
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/

This was a great read.  The one thing I didn't see mentioned was how they handled the buy in.   Did this old man and woman carry several hundred thousand dollars cash  when they made their ticket purchases?  Did they write the store a check?  I would have liked to know if they were doing cash where they ever in a position to be ripped off?

[Parliament 14416]

Very brave thing to do, regardless of the maths. Just throw half a million out there based on your calculations.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13569]

I can’t recall correctly,  but did this guy end up making a deal with the MIT team stay away from each other.  Avoid playing the same game.  Or did they compete?

Even when you try to corner the market in a lottery, the one major risk is if other people also win and you split the prize with them.  

[AUS-97HORN 11895]

30 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I can’t recall correctly,  but did this guy end up making a deal with the MIT team stay away from each other.  Avoid playing the same game.  Or did they compete?

Even when you try to corner the market in a lottery, the one major risk is if other people also win and you split the prize with them.  

this story came out last year and I think we talked about it on the shag.  the MIT team came to the MI couple and tried to collude.  MI couple said nope we arent going to enter into a conspiracy and told the MIT kids to fuck off.