On a related note: Little victory utterly ruined.
Most of these stories seem to centre on finding a loophole or way around a system and raking in some money.
And most of the storytellers have enough sense to keep their wins quiet (or just reveal them in a quasi-anonymous forum like this) and smile to themselves over their win.
Which is why this story shits me so utterly.
Some statistician in Toronto recently found there was in fact a pattern with the State-run scratch lottery cards and it was possible to win every time once you know how.
And it's so simple to figure out he even taught his eight-year-old daughter how to do it.
So did he stay quiet and make some nice cash? Did he fuck, he wrote a fucking story about it in Wired to show how clever he was and ruined the whole thing.
What a dickhead.
Here's his gloating ode to poverty:
www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1
( difficultchild, Sat 12 Feb 2011, 21:40, 8 replies)

I think
I read this in the /links recently? Could have given the trick to some people who could have done with a bit of extra cash.
(RJWEcology is just sharpening his axe on, Sat 12 Feb 2011, 22:34, closed)

He explains in the article that the scam would be less lucrative than his job.

( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Sat 12 Feb 2011, 22:43, closed)

Exactly
"People often assume that I must be some extremely moral person because I didn’t take advantage of the lottery,” he says. “I can assure you that that’s not the case. I’d simply done the math and concluded that beating the game wasn’t worth my time.”

Mind you before that he casually mention that he could have made about $600 a day doing it. Which is quite a lit of money, but for a terribly boring job
( pixel_fucker is going to need a bigger brush, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 0:16, closed)

I'm not sure how he could have.
I take it the US lottery allows you to pick your own scratch card from a pile rather than doling them out one after the other as they do here in the UK?
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 0:34, closed)

I was wondering that as well.
(RJWEcology is just sharpening his axe on, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 9:33, closed)

Aren't the UK ones sealed anyway?
As in you can't see any gameplay at all until you've scratched the top off?
( eXOBeX, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 12:23, closed)

He says
that you either buy a load in bulk and return any unused ones, or you get a retailer to go in on it with you.
( manwithunderpantsonhead older than a Time Lord, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 13:25, closed)

To be fair
He would have made less doing the scratchcard thing than what his job paid him.

Since he liked his job, he didn't really care.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 15:14, closed)