A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texas Lottery

Re:A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texa... by nopeYouAreWrong on Sunday April 13, 2025 @11:38AM (#43673559)

"The game called for picking six numbers from 1 and 54. For a pro gambler, some sets of numbers—such as 1,2,3,4,5,6—aren’t worth picking because so many other players choose them, which would split the pot. Marantelli’s operation bought 99.3% of the possibilities."

Wouldn't this be 54x53x52x51x50x49 = 18,595,558,800 therefore 99.3% is 18,465,389,888.4 or basically over 18 billion dollars in tickets (at $1 per ticket)?

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Re:A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texa... by LatteLazy on Sunday April 13, 2025 @11:56AM (#43673709)

I also could not work this out.

I think there are a bewildering number of games on the Texas lottery [1] but none seem to give the odds listed. But even more confusingly the Texas lottery itself lists the chance of a jackpot as 1 in 25.8mil [2]. So I’m not sure what we’re missing?!

The 1:26mil number must be about correct as google says the whole lottery grosses about 1.2bn a year. So 100m a month. So about 12.5mil tickets sold per draw if they are twice weekly. So a roughly 50% chance of a jackpot. If it were as our numbers show it would take about 16 years for a jackpot to occur even if that were the only game people played.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Lottery

2: https://www.texaslottery.com/export/sites/lottery/Documents/...

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Re:A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texa... by tanaros on Sunday April 13, 2025 @12:12PM (#43673846)

I suspect you have to choose the right numbers but not the right order. That makes the numbers work out.

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Re:A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texa... by 486sx33 on Sunday April 13, 2025 @08:32PM (#43676975)

I believe the game in the article is no longer offered. I think it was a regional game with 3 numbers like lucky 7s or whatever.

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Re:A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texa... by elijaht on Sunday April 13, 2025 @03:11PM (#43675115)

Order doesn't matter, you need to divide by 6!

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Re:A Secretive Gambler Called 'The Joker' Took Down the Texa... by nkurz on Sunday April 13, 2025 @04:07PM (#43675464)

Where the final '!' means 'factorial' not just an emphatic 6.

"6 factorial" is 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 720.

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