My sister-in-law found a winning bet for the New York Lottery.
There was a special promotion at the racino she goes to -- you could take your loser scratch tickets in a certain game to the casino, they'd put them in a big jar, and then whoever won the drawing got a trip to Las Vegas.
She saw there weren't many tickets in the jar, so she bought about $150 of these scratch tickets (she won $80 back so these only cost her $70) and submitted them. Her mom did about half as many.
A few days later her mom gets a phone call and she won a trip to Las Vegas worth $2000. Then she goes there and does some tricks with her loyalty card and now she's on an $800 junket.
I worked it out with decision theory and found that they had played the raffle almost optimally -- it blew my mind since I figured anyone who messed with scratch tickets and video slots would have to be completely impervious to probability theory.
Raffles, in generally, are good for people who play to win. My family regularly wins multiple prizes when they have raffles at the school because we're smart enough not to put tickets in for the Battleship game all the boys want or the hula-hoop all the girls want.
There's always some prize which is cooler than the muggles think that it is, and I'll walk home with it.
Now, you never see books about "how to win at raffles" because unlike Poker and Stock Trading, there's no motivation to suck in players who are just a little bit worse than you.
There was a special promotion at the racino she goes to -- you could take your loser scratch tickets in a certain game to the casino, they'd put them in a big jar, and then whoever won the drawing got a trip to Las Vegas.
She saw there weren't many tickets in the jar, so she bought about $150 of these scratch tickets (she won $80 back so these only cost her $70) and submitted them. Her mom did about half as many.
A few days later her mom gets a phone call and she won a trip to Las Vegas worth $2000. Then she goes there and does some tricks with her loyalty card and now she's on an $800 junket.
I worked it out with decision theory and found that they had played the raffle almost optimally -- it blew my mind since I figured anyone who messed with scratch tickets and video slots would have to be completely impervious to probability theory.
Raffles, in generally, are good for people who play to win. My family regularly wins multiple prizes when they have raffles at the school because we're smart enough not to put tickets in for the Battleship game all the boys want or the hula-hoop all the girls want.
There's always some prize which is cooler than the muggles think that it is, and I'll walk home with it.
Now, you never see books about "how to win at raffles" because unlike Poker and Stock Trading, there's no motivation to suck in players who are just a little bit worse than you.