Re:How MIT Students Won $8M in the Massachusetts Lottery (2012)
by jraedisch on Monday June 08, 2015 @09:50AM
(#9678998)
They must be lessening the chances of winning or the amount per win for other players?! After all I am pretty sure that lottery is a zero sum game.
Re:How MIT Students Won $8M in the Massachusetts Lottery (2012)
by TallGuyShort on Monday June 08, 2015 @10:43AM
(#9679362)
If you're not a group of geniuses at MIT, you really shouldn't be surprised when you lose money gambling. If you're poor enough that I'm supposed to feel sorry for you, buying a lottery ticket is a very irrational thing to be doing.
Re:How MIT Students Won $8M in the Massachusetts Lottery (2012)
by trombone8 on Monday June 08, 2015 @09:54AM
(#9679033)
Indeed, it is in fact the lottery organizers that are scamming people out of their money by giving false impressions about the expected returns.
Re:How MIT Students Won $8M in the Massachusetts Lottery (2012)
by Karunamon on Monday June 08, 2015 @10:11AM
(#9679147)
What false impressions would those be? They haven't been exactly shy about publishing the odds (one in hundreds of millions) of winning the jackpot. Odds for smaller prizes are much better, and they get even better on things like scratch cards.
They absolutely are not. Once someone buys a lottery ticket it's no longer their money. It's the lottery commission's, or the state's, or whomever.
To say that the MIT students were taking advantage of "(largely poor) ticket buyers" is at best extraordinarily disingenuous, if not willfully disregarding several key facts.