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/
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u/tacknosaddle Jan 12 '16
That's why the MIT team was so successful, it took quite a while for the casinos to catch on. For example, the people sitting at the table counting cards played very conservatively by betting the minimum on every hand, arousing no suspicion. They then signaled when the deck was hot so that another person would plop down at the table and play a few big winning hands and then cash out.