WEBVTT - How Do People Game the Lottery? 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:02.280 Guess what will what's that man go? So in two 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.400 thousand twelve, this little farming village in Spain called Sodetto 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:09.200 was struggling and there had been this downturn in the economy. 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:13.040 There was also this massive drought and the town's homeowner 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:16.400 association was running short on cash. But for some reason 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:18.640 they decided to spend what was left of their dues 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.520 on the Christmas Lottery. I guess this is kind of 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:23.840 a Spanish tradition and the whole country gets into it, 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:27.240 but they bought tickets for the whole town. Wow. Yeah, 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:29.240 I've actually heard about the Christmas Lottery. I think we 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:31.640 wrote about it a while back, and of course it 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:34.280 being such a big deal in Spain. Actually saw this 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.520 one study where people were so optimistic around the time 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:39.760 and the Christmas Lottery, Like, even though they know they're 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.400 most likely not going to win, but that optimism actually 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.280 changes their opinions of politicians, and so whoever's running for 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.519 reelection at the time, even if they're overwhelmingly disliked, they 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.320 end up getting this big bounce because of this. Oh 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.400 that's crazy. But going back to this town, they were 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.760 actually really lucky. They played the village when fifty million 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.000 dollars and it got split up among the towns seventy families. Yeah, so, 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:06.760 like there were these unemployed construction workers, are down on 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:09.839 their luck farmers, and they all walked away like millionaires 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:14.040 or at the very least hundred thousand rs. But everyone 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:17.600 except one guy, that is. And he was this Greek 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:19.959 gentleman who was down on his luck. He he'd moved 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.720 to the town for a woman and they'd just broken up, 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.160 and I guess he just wasn't interested in playing and 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:28.760 losing money, So so he didn't get to cash in. 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:31.800 Oh man, what a bumber. So he's the only one 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.000 who didn't participate. Yeah, I mean, things ended up kind 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:36.640 of all right for him. Like he'd been trying to 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.080 sell his barn there and before the lottery, no one 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.240 had money to buy it. But once they did, suddenly 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:46.440 everyone was clamboring to purchase his barn, so he ended 0:01:46.520 --> 0:01:48.600 up with a real estate deal. But today's show is 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.720 all about the lottery. How does statisticians out fox the system? 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:54.360 And why should you care if you find Herbert Hoover 0:01:54.440 --> 0:02:17.640 on your lotto ticket? So let's dive in. Hey, their 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:20.480 podcast listeners, welcome to part time genius. I'm Will Pearson 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:22.720 and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.160 Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass, 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.400 hunched over the fattest stack of Georgia Lotto scratchers I 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:30.400 think I've ever seen. I feel like he might have 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.120 bought all of them, Mango. But that's our friend and 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:35.680 producer Tristan McNeil. You know the other thing I've noticed, 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:38.400 this guy loves scratching these things, Mango. Have you been 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:40.880 watching him over here? Yeah, he actually is using this 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:43.920 special scratch off tool. It's shaped like a little ice craper, 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:45.840 but it goes on your key ring. I think he 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.400 got it off, Etsy, but I think he has it 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.560 just in case of a lot of emergencies. Well, you 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:53.679 never know what's going to happen, and I do wish 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:56.600 you luck, Tristan. But the truth is, winning the lottery 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.280 is a universally accepted long shot, like it's right up 0:03:00.320 --> 0:03:02.920 there with being struck by lightning or crushed by a meteor, 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:05.360 except in the case of winning the lotto, your odds 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.920 are actually much much worse, you know. Yet despite that, 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:13.240 despite knowing, the odds are ridiculously long millions of people 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:15.840 around the world will still pony up for lotteries every 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.280 single year. So with that in mind, we thought it'd 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:21.680 be interesting to explore the psychology behind why people play 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:25.840 the lottery, including how playing changes lives. Plus along the way, 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:28.399 we'll check out the stories of a few enterprising gamblers 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:30.960 who found pretty clever ways to game the system and 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.760 beat those odds. But before we get to that, I 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:35.880 know you did some digging this week into the history 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:38.320 of lottery, so can you fill us in just a 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:40.880 little bit on that before we get to anything else. Yeah, So, 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:44.240 what's crazy is that lotteries are basically as old as arithmetic, 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.000 and you can actually find stories of lotteries in the Bible. 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:50.080 In fact, the first lotteries weren't really about winning prize 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:52.960 money like in the Old Testament. There are all these 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:56.680 references to land lotteries, and Moses actually used one to 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.120 divvy up portions of the promised land along the Jordan River. 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.040 Skulls think this worked similar to how we play powerball, 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:05.200 Like the tribes of Israel would have each taken a 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.920 differently shaped or marked stone and dropped it into a 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.000 clay pot or maybe wrapped it up in a piece 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.200 of cloth and then they would have shaken up all 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.720 the stones and drawn one for each piece of land 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.240 on the docket. But ancient lotteries also had these other uses, 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.159 Like in the sixth century BC, Athenians chose most of 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:25.400 their government officials through sortition, which is actually a term 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.679 for when political representatives are selected at random by people 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.480 casting or drawing lots. Which seems like a weird fit 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:34.720 for that to have been in in Athens, I mean, 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.640 like what it wasn't Athens like the birthplace of democracy? Yeah, 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.119 And and that's actually the thing, Like the Athenians actually 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.160 viewed the lottery as more democratic than elections, and they're 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.320 thinking was that, you know, politicians or wealthy citizens could 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.800 easily rig the outcomes of elections, and to them, sortitians 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:54.640 just seemed like the safer option. So while Athens did 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:56.919 hold elections for a few positions, the bulk of the 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:59.720 appointments were simply left to chance. And the way it 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:02.280 work was that any freeman over the age of eighteen 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:05.000 was entered into a lottery, and if their name was drawn, 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:07.160 they would either be assigned a term as a juror 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.800 or as a member of the Citizen Council. I'm curious about, like, 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.440 how exactly did they run this lottery. It sounds like 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:15.760 they were trying to sort through and pick from a 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:19.400 lot of people, right, Yeah, And it wasn't done powerball style. 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:23.200 They actually had a special device called Claritarian. It's to 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.000 help ensure that the draws were as random as possible. 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:30.479 And it was basically this massive stone slab and it 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.840 had these tiny slots in it for putting tokens in, 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:36.719 and each token identified a different person in the lottery. 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.719 And then they had this long tube connected to the 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:42.440 side of the slab, and when officials poured a bunch 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:44.400 of black and white pebbles into the tube, I mean, 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:47.359 this is ingenious. The pebbles would just scatter across the 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.760 slab and land on different tokens, and that indicated who 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:53.599 would receive positions and who would be dismissed. And I 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.040 don't know, it kind of feels like something out of 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:59.039 the Flintstones Prices. Right. That's pretty great. Yeah, Actually, lotteries 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.320 are so much more on when they include these weird 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:05.719 gadgets or honestly, these like overly complicated systems for choosing 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.680 their winners and just in doing your other digging, did 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:13.159 you find any other early examples of of weirdness like this? Yeah? 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:15.320 I mean, I think you would like the lottery style 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:17.680 game that they played in China during the Han dynasty. 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.919 It was typically played on I guess a white ticket 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.000 and players would select like a series of numbers of characters, 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.720 and if their picks were chosen in the random drawing, 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:30.400 then they'd be senterprize. But this is where it gets special, right, 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.320 because how do you communicate the winning numbers when all 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.120 your players are spread out across a bunch of rural villages? 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.799 All right, well we're talking ancient China, so I'm gonna 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.640 go with I don't know, like a fireworks display or something. 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:45.000 I mean, that would be so fun, right to watch 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:48.320 these fireworks sort of reveal the answers. But fireworks were 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:52.080 still a few centuries away at this point, so instead, 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.919 these Chinese governments used birds to deliver the results to villages, 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:58.360 Like they had a whole fleet of carrier pigeons that 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:01.360 would carry the results from village to village, and then 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.279 they'd also collect the winning tickets along the way. And 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:06.320 in fact, this is actually where the game got its 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:10.000 original name. Bige Po. I know I'm pronouncing that wrong, 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:14.560 but roughly translated, it's called white Pigeon Ticket. I mean 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:16.840 that's pretty cool. So do people still play this white 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.080 pigeon ticket game today? They do, except now the game 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:23.360 has been rebranded as Keno. They've I guess stripped the 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:25.440 pigeons out of the game, which feels like a major 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:31.400 loss to me. But Keino is still a huge money 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.360 maker for Xino's. Even two thousand years ago, the game 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:37.760 was this big financial windfall for China. It was supposedly 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:41.640 invented by a warlord who's named Chung Lung. He'd been 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:43.880 looking for a way to get citizens to help fund 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.760 his army, and selling those white pigeon tickets proved a 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:49.160 great way to do just that. Pretty soon the game 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.240 was being used to fund not just the military, but 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:55.080 all sorts of other public works projects, and in fact, 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:57.440 one version of the game supposedly helped pay for the 0:07:57.440 --> 0:07:59.880 Great Wall of China. You know, that was one of 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:02.520 the surprising things as we were doing our research for 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.880 this week, was realizing how many of these huge projects 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:09.280 were funded by lotteries. I was actually reading just recently 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.880 about colonial America and that it was largely built using 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.520 revenue from lotteries. Like apparently, lotteries had made their way 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:18.800 to America's shores. I think it was back in the 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.840 sixteenth century. And this was really around the same time 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.080 that they were catching on in Europe. So I guess 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.400 in places like Italy and France and England they all 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:30.120 borrowed a page from China's playbook, because you know, they 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:32.720 realized that lotteries were a smart way to raise money 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.000 for these various civic projects. And so it's kind of 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:39.280 crazy how early it was being used in America too. 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:42.360 You look back around sixteen twelve, you had the Virginia 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.360 Company of London actually held a lottery to support the 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:48.760 struggling Jamestown Colony and and really used it to save 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.840 the settlers there from starvation. But it was used in 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.240 these other pittal moments to like, you know, seventeen seventy six, 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:58.240 you had the Constitutional Congress holding a lottery to finance 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.840 soldiers for the Revolutionary Or. And then even after the 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.760 war was one, the New States relied on these lotteries 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.880 for much more of their revenue. And you know, after all, 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:10.280 unfair taxation had been a big part of the war 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:13.040 so you can see why this alternative way to raise 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.280 money was so appealing to politicians. It was, you know, 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.400 just so much easier than creating a new tax. I mean, 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:22.280 it's funny because people often refer to the lottery as 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:25.280 I don't know, like like a voluntary tax. Yeah, and 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:27.479 you know, that's actually how one of the founding fathers 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:30.960 felt about lotteries too. And I'm talking about Thomas Jefferson here, 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:32.880 and he wrote a good bit about it. So once 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:35.560 he wrote about it, he said, um, far from being immoral, 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:39.160 they were indispensable to the existence of man. Their attacks 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.480 laid on the willing only. Of course, Jefferson was more 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:44.600 than a little bit biased in this situation. I mean 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:46.720 that quote comes from a letter that he was writing 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.559 to the Virginia legislature. And he was writing this because 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.360 he was looking for permission to hold his own lottery. 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.240 And I was actually looking into why he was doing this, 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:57.760 and the whole reason he wanted to do it was 0:09:57.800 --> 0:09:59.959 to pay off some of his debts. It's pretty pretty fun. 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:02.839 That's pretty amazing. Yeah, But you know what's weird is 0:10:02.880 --> 0:10:06.160 that there's this whole idea that lotteries are really kind 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:09.640 of this voluntary tax, right, like, it's it's only attacks 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.679 if you're willing to buy in. But there's actually pretty 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:15.880 strong evidence that suggests that long time lotto players are 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.960 induced to play a game that maybe they otherwise wouldn't, 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:21.520 so explain that, Like, what do you mean by that? 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:23.439 All right, well, it might be helpful just to give 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.199 a little bit of background on who's playing the lottery. 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:28.880 So I was looking at this information from Gallop and 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:31.760 it was showing that nearly half of all US adults 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.360 have played a state lottery at least once in their lives. 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:37.000 That's not that surprising. But then if you look a 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.120 little bit closer, the vast majority of those tickets are 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.640 bought by just twenty of the population, and as you 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:45.960 might guess, most of those players who make up that 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.079 are actually among the poorest in the country. In fact, 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:52.400 according to a study from Duke this was done back 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:56.000 in the nineteen eighties, the poorest third of American households 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.880 by roughly half of the lottery tickets that are sold. 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.520 But there's more recent data, and this is what's even 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:05.960 more disturbing, is that on average, households that make less 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.400 than twelve thousand dollars a year, spent a full five 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.480 pc of their incomes on lotteries, five percent of their 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.360 incomes on matters. It's it's it's pretty tragic to see that. 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.280 That's horrifying. So, I mean, there's so many things that 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:22.120 work against the poor. Like I was reading about I'm 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:25.440 pretty sure it was Chicago, but it was about parking tickets, 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:27.560 where if you get a ticket and you don't pay 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:31.400 in time, the price automatically skyrockets, and if you can't 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:33.960 pay that, they boot your car or take away your license, 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:36.360 which then makes it harder to get to your job 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.160 to pay that ticket. And that's actually been driving a 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.079 ton of bankruptcies in the city. I mean, I guess 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:45.120 if you're desperate and you're looking for a fast fix 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:48.520 for your financial troubles, like playing the lottery seems like 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:51.319 the quickest way out. At least that's how I think 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:53.800 about it. But it sounds like you're saying it's more 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.600 than that, Like these people are actually being misled or 0:11:56.679 --> 0:11:59.839 maybe duped or something. Yeah, and you know this, this 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:02.800 actually goes back to a two thousand eight study. You 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:04.720 like the number of studies I'm quoting today. I'm just 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:07.800 grief on all these studies that came armed with them. 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.600 But this was a group of behavioral economists there at 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.520 Carnegie Mellon, and so what they were looking to is, 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:15.920 is it really like the reason why poor people are 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.240 so much more likely to play the lottery than those 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:20.840 who are better off. And what they found was that 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:23.240 a lot of the desire that drives these low income 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:26.440 players isn't so much from being poor as it is 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:29.560 from feeling poor. So here's how the studies authors broke 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:33.080 down their findings. It says um an experiment one, participants 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:35.520 were more likely to purchase lottery tickets when they were 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.560 primed to perceive that their own income was low relative 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.880 to the implicit standard. And then an experiment to, participants 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:46.400 purchased more lottery tickets when they considered non lottery situations 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:51.040 in which rich people or poor people receive advantages, implicitly 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:53.960 highlighting the fact that everyone has an equal chance of 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:58.000 winning the lottery. So basically, when you make people feel poor, 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.320 they played a lottery more, and when they feel like 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.360 it's equal like then then they want to put money 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:05.800 on it because they feel like it's a fair game. 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.439 I mean, it's kind of heartbreaking when you think about 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.160 how low their chances of winning actually are though, right, Yeah, 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:14.840 And I actually found yet another study, and this comes 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:19.000 from the the late age. Can have studies, I'm coming with, 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:21.320 so many of them have almost as many studies as 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:25.320 Tristan has scratch off tickets. Not quite. This one's a 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:27.800 good one too. So this was also in the late eighties, 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:31.320 and the researchers discovered that lottery ticket sales in California, 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:35.000 they rise along with the poverty rate, but movie ticket 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.680 sales actually don't. And so what that says is that 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:40.320 people don't just play the lottery for fun. They're they're 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.160 playing it out of desperation. So, you know, all too 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.560 often the lottery becomes a way for states to shift 0:13:45.600 --> 0:13:48.200 the cost of government services from you know, from the 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:53.560 wealthier citizens onto honestly like the most hopeless ones. Alright, Well, 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.720 now that you've got us all righteously indignant about the lottery, 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.920 here's what I want to talk about. Nerdy geniuses who 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.439 out fox the system and made a lot of pay 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.720 out big time. All right, that sounds like a good idea. 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:18.319 But before we do that, let's take a quick break. 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:22.600 If you're listening to part time genius, so we're talking 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.040 about some of the most brazen lottery scams in history. Alright, Mago, 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.760 So let's live vicariously for a minute through some of 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:31.800 these Loto legends. So who do you want to talk 0:14:31.800 --> 0:14:35.400 about first? Okay, So first I'm gonna tell you about 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:39.360 Moen Shivasa. He is this m I T Train statistician 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.080 who actually found a flaw in a certain scratch off 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:45.720 game from the Ontario Lottery and this effectively allowed him 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:49.960 to predict winning cards about nine of the time. Oh wow, 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.440 So what's his story? So Moen wasn't really interested in 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:56.680 playing a lot of much less exploiting it. But one day, 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:58.760 and this was back in two thousand three, he found 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:00.720 some old scratch offs on his desks that have been 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:02.920 part of this gag gift I guess someone give him, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.640 and on a whim, he scratched off one and one 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.920 three dollars. So he's walking to cash in his ticket 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:10.840 as lunch break, and as he's thinking about it, he 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:13.280 started thinking about how scratch offs must be made right, 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:15.880 and it dawned on him that the tickets are obviously 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:19.040 mass produced, which means that a computer program must be 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:21.440 involved in laying out the numbers on each ticket. Yeah, 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:23.600 I get that, But it's all random, isn't it. Like 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:26.520 that's probably another reason ticket makers use a computer, because 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:29.120 there's no way a human could actually design that many 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:33.160 tickets and still keep the numbering completely random, right, Sure, 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:36.320 but Moon realized that the computers can't be generating truly 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.080 random numbers either, Like if they were, that mean the 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:41.560 lottery company had no control over the actual number of 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.840 winning tickets produced. And if that were the case, it 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.480 would mean that some ticket packets would have very few 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:50.600 winners or maybe even none at all. And obviously it 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:53.040 would be tough to get retailers and also players to 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:55.360 keep buying those tickets if so many of those cards 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.080 were duds. Okay, that that that makes sense. So if 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.520 the tickets like they kind of have to have the 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:05.760 illusion of randomness while actually being incredibly ordered beneath the surface, 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.040 is that what you're saying exactly? And once Moman figured 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:11.720 this out, he decided to try and crack the algorithm 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.520 that generated all those numbers, you know, just for fun, 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:16.920 because he was from M I. T In a statistician, 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.440 so he sat down to study this one tic tac 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.200 toe scratch off game he'd been playing, and after just 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:25.720 a few hours he discovered that the visible numbers on 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:29.360 the ticket actually dictated which digits were hidden under the 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.640 latex coding. So basically, every ticket had like eight tic 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.600 tac toe game boards on it, and each board would 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.400 contain some visible numbers. But if you look to see 0:16:39.400 --> 0:16:42.320 how many times those numbers repeated on the card, and 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:44.600 mostly it was if a number was a singleton and 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.960 not repeating, you could actually tell which cards were winners, 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:50.920 and the prize money could be anywhere between three dollars 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.240 and fifty dollars. Okay, all right, I mean, I know 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.040 it all sounds complicated, But what I find so fascinating 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.800 about this is he's just saying momen basically found a 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:02.440 way to determine if a ticket was a winner without 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:05.480 having to scratch anything off. And and you're saying he 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:07.880 got this trick to work like nine of the time, 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:11.280 that must have made a fortune. So that's the weirdest part. 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:13.719 Moon really did this for the love of math and 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:17.280 not money. In fact, once he was sure his technique worked, 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:21.160 he actually contacted the Ontario Lottery Gaming Corporation and told 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:23.919 him about the flaw he'd found and It's funny because 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.320 he told NPR that he was playing telephone tag with lottery, 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:29.240 and when they finally got to talk to one another, 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.960 they kind of didn't believe him. So he sent them 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.080 twenty unscratched cards and separated them into what he thought 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.800 would be winning cards and duds. And when they scratched 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:40.399 them off and realized he predicted correctly, that's when they 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:43.280 called him back. Oh man, I bet he felt pretty awesome. 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.639 That's pretty wild. Yeah, I mean, he later discovered the 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.439 problem wasn't exclusive Ontario. I mean, it kind of makes sense, right. 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.680 It turned out the same trick was also being employed 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.840 in Colorado, though when he analyzed those cards he could 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:58.800 only figure them out with accuracy. I mean, that's still 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.320 pretty impressive. But I mean, you know, it's as nice 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:04.240 as it was for Owen to come clean about his discovery. 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:06.639 I feel like that's certainly not how most attempts to 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.199 game the lottery turnout. And I was just looking at 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:11.200 some other cases, you know, if you take the case 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:14.360 of Jerry and Marge Selby, for instance, And this comes 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.000 from this great story by Jason Fagoni and and we 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.200 actually had Jason on the program earlier. This year to 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:21.560 talk about his book. It was called The Woman Who 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:24.000 Smashed Codes. I mean, that was honestly one of my 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.160 favorite episodes. Is so fascinating, and my mom just bought 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.159 that book because she loved Jason so much. But to 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:32.480 tell me about the Selby's. All right, So they're from 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:34.919 Michigan and they were basically among the first players to 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:36.760 find a flaw in a state lottery game. The game 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:39.800 was called Windfall, and this was back in two thousand three, 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.680 and it came down to this unique quirk and windfalls rules, namely, 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:46.520 whenever the jackpot would rise to roughly two million dollars 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:49.680 or so without anybody winning it, the payoffs for smaller 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:53.879 prizes increased dramatically. So basically, if a player waited until 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.040 this so called rolldown period, which typically lasted for a 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.000 few days every three months or so, they would stay 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.480 and to win more than they lost. And of course 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:04.760 this is on average, and so if they were to 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:08.000 buy an especially high number of tickets during that rolldown, 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.879 say like you know, a hundred thousand dollars worth, then 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.159 they would be practically guaranteed to turn a ten to 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:17.399 fifteen percent profit. Okay, so the more tickets of player 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:19.560 buys during the special period, the more money they're kind 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.400 of a short to win. So I'm curious how many 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.000 tickets did Jerry and March go in on. It was unbelievable, 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:28.840 the number of tickets. I mean, they basically treated Windfall 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.080 like their retirement plan, and they played for the better 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:35.120 part of a decade. In fact, Michigan retired the game 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:38.399 only from Massachusetts to roll out their own versions soon after, 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.639 and so the Selby's actually took their ticket buying operation 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:44.000 on the road. What they would do is they just 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:46.600 pile into their truck, they drive the twelve hours or 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:49.440 so to Massachusetts, and then they'd set up shop in 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:53.520 two separate convenience stores, printing ream after ream of tickets 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.520 for honestly, for hours at a time. So I've been 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.240 stuck in bodegos behind people playing the lotto, and it's 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:02.720 so frustrating, Like you can be there for like ten 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:05.120 minutes or fifteen minutes. You can take forever when you're 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:08.000 in a rush. But how many tickets are we actually 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:09.920 talking about here? You are not going to believe this. 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:11.919 So at the height of their scheme, the couple was 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.959 spending over six hundred thousand dollars on a single play 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.600 of Windfall. Keep this in mind, we're talking two dollars 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:21.440