The lottery is a gamble. One is likely to waste more money on trying to win it than saving that money for something more useful.

(January 8, 2015 at 3:42 pm)robvalue Wrote: Oh yeah, well you can certainly cheat at roulette hehe. I was talking about playing fairly.

Indeed, the only "systems" require an infinite bankroll and as such are nonsense. As you say, statistics takes you down. Luckily for casinos, the world is full of people who have no idea how this works.

Using your head to predict a small slice of the wheel were the ball won't land is not cheating. Using a pocket computer and a laser or camera to do the same is cheating.

I don't believe people have successfully beat roulette without cheating but I would not go as far to say that it is impossible. I have never once played roulette, but I have watched it and thought about how you could beat it. Somebody really good with music might be able to do it. A musically inclined savant maybe.

(January 8, 2015 at 3:18 pm)Cato Wrote:

(January 8, 2015 at 2:50 pm)BlackMason Wrote: They can tell the computer to generate a no win combination so they can snow ball the jackpot.

This is only conceivably possible if the winning numbers are known beforehand. The air and gravity mix machine outputs are extremely difficult to manipulate, making your earlier comparison to casino slot machines out of place.

Not true. If I, the lottery board, know all number combinations played, why do I need to know the winning numbers before hand? Why can't I simply negate all played combinations? This is exactly what I'm claiming.

(January 8, 2015 at 3:18 pm)Cato Wrote: - No conspiracy is needed to progress jackpots, simply change the rules of the lottery. The 6/49 game has a chance of winning the jackpot of about 1:14,000,000. The larger U.S. lottery's have gone to a two barrel system, 5/75 and 1/15 as an example, yielding a jackpot winning chance of 1:258,000,000. This is the reason why there are frequently no jackpot winners and few multiple jackpot winners, not some conspiracy.

The lottery is heavily regulated. South Africa has a population of around 51 million people. It would be unethical to make a lottery game with 1:258,000,000. The 6/49 actually has odds of 1:13,983,816. I believe the ethical and bureaucratic issues are one of the reasons we were late on the power ball scene ( 5/45 + 1/20 1:24,435,180).

(January 8, 2015 at 3:18 pm)Cato Wrote: I think BlackMason was referring to the quickpick option for generating a ticket.

No I wasn't. If the infrastructure is there why not use it. On the same day of each lottery draw, they release stats. This happens a few hours after said draw. Computers are keeping track of all combinations. If you read up on the history of the lotto you'd discover it's not so clean history. I think I have a reasonable if not strong case here.

(January 8, 2015 at 3:18 pm)Cato Wrote: Before you waste your time...

I think you're wasting mine.

(January 8, 2015 at 3:28 pm)Heywood Wrote: You can turn roulette into a positive EV game if you can predict a small slice of the wheel where the ball will not land before the croupier waves off further betting. Machines can do this

This would fall under the category of "cheating", not a system.

(January 8, 2015 at 3:28 pm)Heywood Wrote: and some people claim to be able to do this in there head(but I have serious doubts about that).

Given how the game works, I'm skeptical in the extreme with the respect to those claims.

(January 8, 2015 at 4:02 pm)BlackMason Wrote:

(January 8, 2015 at 3:18 pm)Cato Wrote: This is only conceivably possible if the winning numbers are known beforehand. The air and gravity mix machine outputs are extremely difficult to manipulate, making your earlier comparison to casino slot machines out of place.

Not true. If I, the lottery board, know all number combinations played, why do I need to know the winning numbers before hand? Why can't I simply negate all played combinations? This is exactly what I'm claiming.

You don't need to do this to snow ball jack pots. Set the odds to 1 in a googleplex and the jack pot will never be won....it will snow ball until the earth is swallowed by the sun. Set it to say 1 in and a billion and it might snow ball to several billion dollars before it is won. Set it to 1 in 256 million and it might grow to a be several hundred million dollars on occasion.

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(January 8, 2015 at 4:07 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(January 8, 2015 at 3:28 pm)Heywood Wrote: You can turn roulette into a positive EV game if you can predict a small slice of the wheel where the ball will not land before the croupier waves off further betting. Machines can do this

This would fall under the category of "cheating", not a system.

I call it a cheating system.

(January 8, 2015 at 4:13 pm)Heywood Wrote:

(January 8, 2015 at 4:07 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: This would fall under the category of "cheating", not a system.

I call it a cheating system.

Always the contrarian, eh?

Try it out sometime. Let me know how you like Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison.

I've never played the lottery because of my bias against giving my money to the state. So the following is probably uninformed and seriously flawed.

I see reels of "scratch off" tickets at my grocery store. I am familiar with some scratch off sales promotions where a thick rubbery paint obscures an underlying text or icon. By scratching away the paint the underlying image is revealed which usually says something like 'you lost, try again.'
I expect imaging techniques have improved since this system was invented. What keeps an enterprising individual from peeking under the paint with some, I'm not sure what, technological help? Perhaps heat the surface slightly with an infra-red source then watch to see if there is a differential rate of cooling over the image vs ground. Non-contact mass spectrometry? X-rays? Positron emission blocked more by the ink underneath?
With the help of a 7-11 clerk after hours, you image the roll to find and mark the winners then make sure you are able to take them for yourselves as the roll is sold off.
Or is the information gained not helpful in determining if a ticket is a winner?

For myself, the effort isn't worth the probably unlikely payback. There are so many other 'honest' ways to make a buck. But the experimentalist in me can't help but speculate.

(January 8, 2015 at 4:20 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:

(January 8, 2015 at 4:13 pm)Heywood Wrote: I call it a cheating system.

Always the contrarian, eh?

Try it out sometime. Let me know how you like Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison.

Not all jurisdictions are as brutal as Nevada. If I were to use or have used such a cheating system. I would go across the pond.

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(January 8, 2015 at 4:24 pm)JuliaL Wrote: I've never played the lottery because of my bias against giving my money to the state. So the following is probably uninformed and seriously flawed.

I see reels of "scratch off" tickets at my grocery store. I am familiar with some scratch off sales promotions where a thick rubbery paint obscures an underlying text or icon. By scratching away the paint the underlying image is revealed which usually says something like 'you lost, try again.'
I expect imaging techniques have improved since this system was invented. What keeps an enterprising individual from peeking under the paint with some, I'm not sure what, technological help? Perhaps heat the surface slightly with an infra-red source then watch to see if there is a differential rate of cooling over the image vs ground. Non-contact mass spectrometry? X-rays? Positron emission blocked more by the ink underneath?
With the help of a 7-11 clerk after hours, you image the roll to find and mark the winners then make sure you are able to take them for yourselves as the roll is sold off.
Or is the information gained not helpful in determining if a ticket is a winner?

For myself, the effort isn't worth the probably unlikely payback. There are so many other 'honest' ways to make a buck. But the experimentalist in me can't help but speculate.

Sometimes it is possible to spot "variations" in the tickets which will tell you it is a winner or not without having to scratch them off.

(January 8, 2015 at 7:00 am)BlackMason Wrote: Why do I think the lottery is not random? Because casino slot machines and similar equipment is rigged. The lottery is gambling. The way the lottery works is by playing on the hopes and greed of individuals by promising life changing money. Therefore I believe there has to be a way for the lottery operators to prevent too many people winning the jackpot. If too many people win the jackpot then they will have to split the prize money. This has the effect of making the lottery lose it's lustre. No other gambling system has life changing jackpots like the big L.

I don't really get where you're coming from. The lottery's simple: you sell 100 tickets for a dollar each and you give out $60 to the winner. Doesn't matter if the number's random or not.

This is just like, say, poker machines. They're not "rigged" in the sense that they see you holding a 4, 5, 6, 7 of spades and say to themselves "aha! I will lower the probability of him getting the 8 of spades from 1 in 47 to 0, thus taking his money!"; they're "rigged" in the sense that, when you play perfectly, you might have a 1 in 10,127 chance of getting a certain hand but it only pays you 10,000x when you do get that hand.

I think the point's been made here that the take in gambling isn't due to a lack of randomization within the system, it's due to the system itself. The only thing not randomizing would do is allow people to figure out the ways in which things aren't randomized, thus allowing them to exploit your system.

One-time key's uncrackable, yo.

(January 8, 2015 at 4:02 pm)BlackMason Wrote: Not true. If I, the lottery board, know all number combinations played, why do I need to know the winning numbers before hand? Why can't I simply negate all played combinations? This is exactly what I'm claiming.

It's the same thing, accusing the board of knowing the result ahead of time and ensuring that a specific combination is played.

If all possible played combinations are random, then the population of combinations remaining is also random. One is chosen and then in a fashion that has yet to be demonstrated, the board forces that number to be the jackpot. The board still knows in advance what the desired winning combination should be.

Worse for you, in this scenario the jackpot numbers with no winner are still randomly determined so your analysis isn't going to yield anything.