WEBVTT - Fan Favorite: How Do People Game the Lottery? 0:00:02.160 --> 0:00:04.240 I guess what will what's that man go? So in 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.160 two thousand twelve, this little farming village in Spain called 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:10.880 Sodetto was struggling and there had been this downturn in 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:14.360 the economy. There was also this massive drought and the 0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:18.200 town's homeowner association was running short on cash. But for 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:20.439 some reason they decided to spend what was left of 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:23.520 their dues on the Christmas Lottery. I guess this is 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:25.800 kind of a Spanish tradition and the whole country gets 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:29.200 into it, but they bought tickets for the whole town. Wow, 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:31.280 you know, I've actually heard about the Christmas Lottery. I 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:33.640 think we wrote about it a while back, and of 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.240 course it being such a big deal in Spain. Actually 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.320 saw this one study where people were so optimistic around 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:41.519 the time and the Christmas Lottery, Like, even though they 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:44.479 know they're most likely not going to win, but that 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:49.120 optimism actually changes their opinions of politicians, and so whoever's 0:00:49.159 --> 0:00:51.320 running for re election at the time, even if they're 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.840 overwhelmingly disliked, they end up getting this big bounce because 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.240 of this. Oh that's crazy. But going back to this town, 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.480 they were actually really lucky. They played the village won 0:01:01.560 --> 0:01:04.640 nine fifty million dollars and it got split up among 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:06.920 the towns seventy families. Yeah, so, like there were these 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.160 unemployed construction workers, are down on their luck farmers, and 0:01:10.400 --> 0:01:12.880 they all walked away like millionaires or at the very 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:18.440 least hundred thousand airs. But everyone except one guy, that is. 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.120 And he was this Greek gentleman who was down on 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.080 his luck. He he'd moved to the town for a 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.440 woman and they'd just broken up, and I guess he 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:29.800 just wasn't interested in playing and losing money, So so 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.840 he didn't get to cash in. Oh man, what a bumber. 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.200 So he's the only one who didn't participate. Yeah, I mean, 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:38.240 things ended up kind of all right for him. Like 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:40.680 he'd been trying to sell his barn there, and before 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:42.800 the lottery, no one had money to buy it. But 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.479 once they did, suddenly everyone was clamboring to purchase his barn, 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:49.960 so he ended up with a real estate deal. But 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:52.960 today's show is all about the lottery. How does statisticians 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.600 out fox the system? And why should you care if 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.160 you find Herbert Hoover on your lotto ticket? So let's 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:21.920 dive in hei their podcast listeners Welcome to Part Time Genius. 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.080 I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:26.520 good friend MANGESHW Ticketer and on the other side of 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:29.680 the soundproof glass, hunched over the fattest stack of Georgia 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.200 Lotto scratchers I think I've ever seen. I feel like 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:34.880 he might have bought all of them, Mango, But that's 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:37.440 our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. You know the other thing, 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:40.480 I've noticed, this guy loves scratching these things, Mango. Have 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.079 you been watching him over here? Yeah, he actually's using 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:45.560 this special scratch off tool. It's shaped like a little 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:47.639 ice craper, but it goes on your key ring. I 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.760 think you got it off, Etsy, but I think he hasn't. 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.840 Just in case of a lot of emergencies. Well, you 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.000 never know what's going to happen, and I do wish 0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:58.880 you luck, Tristan. But the truth is, winning the lottery 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.520 is a universe accepted long shot, like it's right up 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.200 there with being struck by lightning or crushed by a meteor, 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:07.680 except in the case of winning the lotto, your odds 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.280 are actually much much worse, you know. Yet despite that, 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:15.480 despite knowing the odds are ridiculously long, millions of people 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.120 around the world will still pony up for lotteries every 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:20.560 single year. So with that in mind, we thought it'd 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.960 be interesting to explore the psychology behind why people play 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:28.120 the lottery, including how playing changes lives. Plus along the way, 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.679 we'll check out the stories of a few enterprising gamblers 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.240 who found pretty clever ways to game the system and 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.040 beat those odds. But before we get to that, I 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.160 know you did some digging this week into the history 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:40.600 of lottery, so can you fill us in just a 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:43.160 little bit on that before we get to anything else. Yeah, So, 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.520 what's crazy is that lotteries are basically as old as arithmetic, 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:49.280 and you can actually find stories of lotteries in the Bible. 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.360 In fact, the first lotteries weren't really about winning prize 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.240 money like in the Old Testament. There are all these 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.960 references to land lotteries, and Moses actually used one to 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:01.440 divvy up portions of the promised land along the Jordan River. 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.320 Scholars think this worked similar to how we play powerball, 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:07.480 Like the tribes of Israel would have each taken a 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:10.200 differently shaped or marked stone and dropped it into a 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.280 clay pot, or maybe wrapped it up in a piece 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:14.480 of cloth, and then they would have shaken up all 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:17.000 the stones and drawn one for each piece of land 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.560 on the docket. But ancient lotteries also had these other uses, 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:24.440 Like in the sixth century BC, Athenians chose most of 0:04:24.440 --> 0:04:27.680 their government officials through sortition, which is actually a term 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.960 for when political representatives are selected at random by people 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.760 casting or drawing lots. Which seems like a weird fit 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:37.040 for that to have been in in Athens. I mean 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.880 what it wasn't Athens like the birthplace of democracy? Yeah, 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:43.440 And and that's actually the thing, Like the Athenians actually 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:47.440 viewed the lottery as more democratic than elections, and they're 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.640 thinking was that, you know, politicians or wealthy citizens could 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:54.039 easily rig the outcomes of elections, and to them, sortitition 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:56.920 just seemed like the safer option. So while Athens did 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.160 hold elections for a few positions, the bulk of the 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:02.039 appointments were simply left to chance. And the way it 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:04.599 worked was that any freeman over the age of eighteen 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.280 was entered into a lottery, and if their name was drawn, 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:09.480 they would either be assigned a term as a juror 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:13.080 or as a member of the Citizen Council. I'm curious about, like, 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.720 how exactly did they run this lottery. It sounds like 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:18.039 they were trying to sort through and pick from a 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.680 lot of people, right, yeah, And it wasn't done powerball style. 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.479 They actually had a special device called Claritarian. It's to 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.280 help ensure that the draws were as random as possible. 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:32.800 And it was basically this massive stone slab and it 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:36.120 had these tiny slots in it for putting tokens in, 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.000 and each token identified a different person in the lottery. 0:05:39.240 --> 0:05:42.000 And then they had this long tube connected to the 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:44.720 side of the slab, and when officials poured a bunch 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:46.680 of black and white pebbles into the tube, I mean, 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:49.640 this is ingenious. The pebbles would just scatter across the 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.080 slab and land on different tokens, and that indicated who 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.880 would receive positions and who would be dismissed. And I 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:57.359 don't know, it kind of feels like something out of 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.760 the Flintstones Prices, right, that's pretty right, you know. Actually, 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.280 lotteries are so much more fun when they include these 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:07.480 weird gadgets or honestly, these like overly complicated systems for 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.799 choosing their winners. And just in doing your other digging, 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:15.440 did you find any other early examples of weirdness like this? Yeah, 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:17.640 I mean I think you would like the lottery style 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:19.960 game that they played in China during the Han dynasty. 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.200 It was typically played on I guess a white ticket 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.279 and players would select like a series of numbers of characters, 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:29.000 and if their picks were chosen in the random drawing, 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:32.680 then they'd be senterprize. But this is where it gets special, right, 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.600 because how do you communicate the winning numbers when all 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.400 your players are spread out across a bunch of rural villages? 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:42.080 All right, well we're talking ancient China, So I'm gonna 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:44.920 go with I don't know, like a fireworks display or something. 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:47.280 I mean, that would be so fun, right to watch 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.600 these fireworks sort of reveal the answers. But fireworks were 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:54.359 still a few centuries away at this point, so instead, 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:58.200 these Chinese governments used birds to deliver the results to villages, 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.560 Like they had a whole fleet of care your pigeons 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:03.400 that would carry the results from village to village, and 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.000 then they'd also collect the winning tickets along the way. 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.480 And in fact, this is actually where the game got 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.960 its original name Bidge p O. I know I'm pronouncing 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.960 that wrong, but roughly translated, it's called white Pigeon Ticket. 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:18.680 I mean that's pretty cool. So do people still play 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:22.080 this white pigeon Ticket game today? They do, except now 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.200 the game has been rebranded as Keno. They've I guess 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:27.120 stripped the pigeons out of the game, which feels like 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:33.040 a major loss to me. But Keino is still a 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.280 huge money maker for Xino's. Even two thousand years ago, 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.480 the game was this big financial windfall for China. It 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.040 was supposedly invented by a warlord who's named Chung Lung. 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:45.640 He'd been looking for a way to get citizens to 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:48.679 help fund his army, and selling those white pigeon tickets 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:51.160 proved a great way to do just that. Pretty soon 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:53.360 the game was being used to fund not just the military, 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.360 but all sorts of other public works projects, and in fact, 0:07:57.520 --> 0:07:59.720 one version of the games supposedly help pay for the 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.120 Great Well of China. You know, that was one of 0:08:02.160 --> 0:08:04.640 the most surprising things as we were doing our research 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.520 for this week, was realizing how many of these huge 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:11.040 projects were funded by lotteries. I was actually reading just 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.760 recently about colonial America and that it was largely built 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:18.560 using revenue from lotteries. Like apparently, lotteries had made their 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.000 way to America's shores. I think it was back in 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:23.840 the sixteenth century. And this was really around the same 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:26.120 time that they were catching on in Europe. So I 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.000 guess in places like Italy and France and England they 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:32.840 all borrowed a page from China's playbook because they realized 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.160 that lotteries were a smart way to raise money for 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:38.640 these various civic projects. And so it's kind of crazy 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:42.000 how early it was being used in America too. You 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:45.040 look back around sixteen twelve, you had the Virginia Company 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.160 of London actually held a lottery to support the struggling 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.120 Jamestown Colony and and really used it to save the 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.319 settlers there from starvation. But it was used in these 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.520 other pittal moments to like, you know, seventeen seventy six, 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.520 you had the Constitutional Congress holding a lottery of finance 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:04.120 soldiers for the Revolutionary War. And then even after the 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:07.040 war was one, the New States relied on these lotteries 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.640 for much more of their revenue. And after all, unfair 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:12.839 taxation had been a big part of the war, So 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:15.640 you can see why this alternative way to raise money 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.760 was so appealing to politicians. It was, you know, just 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.679 so much easier than creating a new tax. I mean, 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:24.560 it's funny because people often refer to the lottery as 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.560 I don't know, like like a voluntary tax. Yeah, and 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:29.760 you know, that's actually how one of the founding fathers 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:33.240 felt about lotteries too. And I'm talking about Thomas Jefferson here, 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:35.200 and he wrote a good bit about it. So once 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:37.840 he wrote about it, he said, um, far from being immoral, 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.440 they were indispensable to the existence of man. Their attacks 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.800 laid on the willing only. Of course, Jefferson was more 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:46.920 than a little bit biased in this situation. I mean 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.000 that quote comes from a letter that he was writing 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:51.839 to the Virginia Legislature. And he was writing this because 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:54.640 he was looking for permission to hold his own lottery. 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:57.560 And I was actually looking into why he was doing this, 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:00.079 and the whole reason he wanted to do it is 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:02.480 to pay off some of his debts. It's pretty pretty funny, 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:05.160 that's pretty amazing. Yeah, But you know what's weird is 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.439 that there's this whole idea that lotteries are really kind 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.960 of this voluntary tax, right, like, it's it's only attacks 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.000 if you're willing to buy in. But there's actually pretty 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:18.160 strong evidence that suggests that long time lotto players are 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.240 induced to play a game that maybe they otherwise wouldn't, 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:23.800 so explain that, Like, what do you mean by that? 0:10:23.880 --> 0:10:25.719 All right, well, it might be helpful just to give 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.480 a little bit of background on who's playing the lottery. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.160 So I was looking at this information from Gallop and 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:34.040 it was showing that nearly half of all US adults 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.640 have played a state lottery at least once in their lives. 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.280 That's not that surprising. But then if you look a 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.400 little bit closer, the vast majority of those tickets are 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:45.920 bought by just twenty of the population, and as you 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.199 might guess, most of those players who make up that 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.360 are actually among the poorest in the country. In fact, 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:54.679 according to a study from Duke this was done back 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:58.280 in the nineteen eighties, the poorest third of American households 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:01.160 by roughly half of the lottery tickets that are sold. 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:04.800 But there's more recent data, and this is what's even 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:08.240 more disturbing, is that on average, households that make less 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.640 than twelve thousand dollars a year, spend a full five 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.760 percent of their incomes on lotteries, five pc of their 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.640 incomes on Matteri's it's it's it's pretty tragic to see that. 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.560 That's horrifying. So, I mean, there's so many things that 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.400 work against the poor. Like I was reading about I'm 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.720 pretty sure it was Chicago, but it was about parking tickets, 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:29.839 where if you get a ticket and you don't pay 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:33.680 in time, the price automatically skyrockets, and if you can't 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:36.240 pay that, they boot your car or take away your license, 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:38.640 which then makes it harder to get to your job 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.439 to pay that ticket. And that's actually been driving a 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:44.360 ton of bankruptcies in the city. I mean, I guess 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:47.400 if you're desperate and you're looking for a fast fix 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.800 for your financial troubles, like playing the lottery seems like 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.600 the quickest way out. At least that's how I think 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:56.079 about it. But it sounds like you're saying it's more 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:58.880 than that, Like these people are actually being misled or 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.200 maybe duped or something. Yeah, and you know this, this 0:12:02.240 --> 0:12:05.040 actually goes back to a two thousand eight study. You 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:07.000 like the number of studies I'm quoting today. I'm just 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:10.080 briefed on all these studies that came armed with them. 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:12.880 But this was a group of behavioral economists there at 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:15.800 Carnegie Mellon, and so what they were looking to is, 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:18.200 is it really like the reason why poor people are 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:20.520 so much more likely to play the lottery than those 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.120 who are better off. And what they found was that 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.480 a lot of the desire that drives these low income 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:28.720 players isn't so much from being poor as it is 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.840 from feeling poor. So here's how the studies authors broke 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:35.319 down their findings. That says um an experiment one, participants 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:37.800 were more likely to purchase lottery tickets when they were 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.840 primed to perceive that their own income was low relative 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:45.199 to the implicit standard. And then an experiment to, participants 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:48.679 purchased more lottery tickets when they considered non lottery situations 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:53.319 in which rich people or poor people receive advantages, implicitly 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:56.280 highlighting the fact that everyone has an equal chance of 0:12:56.320 --> 0:13:00.280 winning the lottery. So basically, when you make people feel poor, 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.600 they played the lottery more. And when they feel like 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:06.680 it's equal like then then they want to put money 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:08.080 on it because they feel like it's a fair game. 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.720 I mean, it's kind of heartbreaking when you think about 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.480 how low their chances of winning actually are though, right, yeah, 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.120 And I actually found yet another study, and this comes 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:21.480 from the the late age studies I'm coming with, so 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.080 many of them have almost as many studies as Tristan 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.800 has scratch off tickets. Not quite. This one's a good 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.120 one too. So this was also in the late eighties, 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.599 and the researchers discovered that lottery ticket sales in California, 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:37.280 they rise along with the poverty rate, but movie ticket 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.960 sales actually don't. And so what that says is that 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:42.600 people don't just play the lottery for fun. They're they're 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.439 playing it out of desperation. So, you know, all too 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:47.840 often the lottery becomes a way for states to shift 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.480 the cost of government services from, you know, from the 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:55.840 wealthier citizens onto honestly like the most hopeless ones. All right, Well, 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.000 now that you've got us all righteously indignant about the lottery, 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.280 here's what I want to talk about. Nerdy geniuses who 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:04.719 out fox the system and made a lot of pay 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:08.000 out big time. All right, that sounds like a good idea. 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:09.839 But before we do that, let's take a quick break. 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:24.880 If you're listening to part time genius. So we're talking 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:27.640 about some of the most brazen lottery scams in history. 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:30.520 All right, Mago, So let's live vicariously for a minute 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.600 through some of these lot of legends. So who do 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:36.920 you want to talk about first? Okay? So first I'm 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.960 gonna tell you about Moen Shivasa. He is this m 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:43.360 I T trained statistician who actually found a flaw in 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.640 a certain scratch off game from the Ontario Lottery and 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:50.120 this effectively allowed him to predict winning cards about nine 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.000 of the time. Oh wow, So what's his story? So 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:56.960 Moen wasn't really interested in playing a lot of much 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.720 less exploiting it. But one day, and this was back 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.160 into thousand three, he found some old scratch offs on 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:04.040 his desk that have been part of this gag gift 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:06.360 I guess someone give him, and on a whim, he 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.040 scratched off one and one three dollars. So he's walking 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:12.400 to cash in his ticket as lunch break, and as 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:14.440 he's thinking about it, he started thinking about how scratch 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:16.800 offs must be made right, and it dawned on him 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.160 that the tickets are obviously mass produced, which means that 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.280 a computer program must be involved in laying out the 0:15:22.360 --> 0:15:24.680 numbers on each ticket. Yeah, I get that, But it's 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:27.240 all random, isn't it. Like that's probably another reason ticket 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:29.840 makers use a computer, because there's no way a human 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:32.840 could actually design that many tickets and still keep the 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:36.760 numbering completely random, right, Sure? But Moan realized that the 0:15:36.760 --> 0:15:40.360 computers can't be generating truly random numbers either, Like if 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:42.880 they were, the mean, the lottery company had no control 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:46.000 over the actual number of winning tickets produced, and if 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:48.360 that were the case, it would mean that some ticket 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.520 packets would have very few winners or maybe even none 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:53.680 at all. And obviously it would be tough to get 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.560 retailers and also players to keep buying those tickets if 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.080 so many of those cards were duds. Okay, that that 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.440 that makes sense. So if the tickets like they kind 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.720 of have to have the illusion of randomness while actually 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.840 being incredibly ordered beneath the surfaces, is that what you're 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:12.400 saying exactly? And once Moment figured this out, he decided 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.560 to try and crack the algorithm that generated all those numbers, 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:18.120 you know, just for fun, because he was from M. I. 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:21.880 T In a statistician, so he sat down to study 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:24.440 this one tic tac toe scratch off game he'd been playing, 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.000 and after just a few hours he discovered that the 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:30.880 visible numbers on the ticket actually dictated which digits were 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:35.080 hidden under the latex coding. So basically every ticket had 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.880 like eight Tic tac toe game boards on it, and 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:41.000 each board would contain some visible numbers. But if you 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:43.640 look to see how many times those numbers repeated on 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:46.080 the card, and mostly it was if a number was 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.360 a singleton and not repeating, you could actually tell which 0:16:49.400 --> 0:16:52.040 cards were winners, and the prize money could be anywhere 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:56.280 between three dollars and fifty dollars. Okay, all right, I mean, 0:16:56.360 --> 0:16:58.520 I know it all sounds complicated, But what I find 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:02.040 so fascinating about this is you're saying Momen basically found 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:04.359 a way to determine if a ticket was a winner 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.680 without having to scratch anything off. And and you're saying 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.160 he got this trick to work like nine of the time, 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.840 that guy must have made a fortune. So that's the 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.159 weirdest part. Moon really did this for the love of 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.640 math and not money. In fact, once he was sure 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:22.480 his technique worked, he actually contacted the Ontario Lottery Gaming 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.280 Corporation and told him about the flaw he'd found. And 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:27.840 it's funny because he told NPR that he was playing 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.680 telephone tag with lottery, and when they finally got to 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.480 talk to one another, they kind of didn't believe him. 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.719 So he sent them twenty unscratched cards and separated them 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:38.840 into what he thought would be winning cards and duds. 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.880 And when they scratched them off and realized he predicted correctly, 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:44.600 that's when they called him back. Oh man, I bet 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:48.000 he felt pretty awesome. That's pretty wild. Yeah, I mean, 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:50.720 he later discovered the problem wasn't exclusive to Ontario. I mean, 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:52.560 it kind of makes sense, right. It turned out the 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:56.600 same trick was also being employed in Colorado, though when 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:58.960 he analyzed those cards he could only figure them out 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:02.640 with curacy. I mean, that's still pretty impressive. But I mean, 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:04.400 you know, it's as nice as it was for Owen 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:07.240 to come clean about his discovery. I feel like that's 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.360 certainly not how most attempts to game the lottery turnout. 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:12.480 And I was just looking at some other cases, you know, 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:14.960 if you take the case of Jerry and Marge Selby, 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:17.880 for instance, and this comes from this great story by 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.280 Jason Fagoni and and we actually had Jason on the 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:22.399 program earlier this year to talk about his book. It 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.439 was called The Woman Who Smashed Codes. I mean, that 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.080 was honestly one of my favorite episodes. Is so fascinating, 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:30.639 and my mom just bought that book because she loved 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.640 Jason so much. But to tell me about the Selby's. 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:36.119 All right, So they're from Michigan and they were basically 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:37.879 among the first players to find a flaw in a 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.719 state lottery game. The game was called Windfall, and this 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:42.800 was back in two thousand three, and it came down 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.399 to this unique quirk and Windfalls rules, namely, whenever the 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:49.080 jackpot would rise to roughly two million dollars or so 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:53.920 without anybody winning it, the payoffs for smaller prizes increased dramatically. 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:56.840 So basically, if a player waited until this so called 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.320 rolldown period, which typically lasted for a few days every 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:03.120 three months or so, they would stand to win more 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.880 than they lost. And of course this is on average, 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:08.320 and so if they were to buy an especially high 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.359 number of tickets during that rolldown, say like you know, 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.360 a hundred thousand dollars worth, and they would be practically 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:18.280 guaranteed to turn a ten to fifteen percent profit. Okay, 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:20.919 so the more tickets of player buys during the special period, 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:22.640 the more money they're kind of a short to win. 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:25.880 So I'm curious how many tickets did Jerry and March 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.119 go in on. It was unbelievable, the number of tickets. 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.640 I mean, they basically treated Windfall like their retirement plan, 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:35.440 and they played for the better part of a decade. 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:38.680 In fact, Michigan retired the game only from Massachusetts to 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.240 roll out their own versions soon after, and so the 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:44.760 Selby's actually took their ticket buying operation on the road. 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.359 What they would do is they just pile into their truck, 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:50.600 they drive the twelve hours or so to Massachusetts, and 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:53.479 then they'd set up shop in two separate convenience stores, 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.360 printing ream after ream of tickets for honestly, for hours 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:01.320 at a time. So I've been sucking bodegos behind people 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:04.159 playing the lotto, and it's so frustrating, Like you can 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:06.040 be there for like ten minutes or fifteen minutes. You 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:09.200 can take forever when you're in a rush. But how 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:11.400 many tickets are we actually talking about here? You are 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:13.080 not going to believe this. So at the height of 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:16.400 their scheme, the couple was spending over six hundred thousand 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:20.160 dollars on a single play of windfall. Keep this in mind, 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.040