May 11, 2005
AH, SO (via The Mother Judd):
Who Needs Giacomo? Bet on the Fortune Cookie (JENNIFER 8. LEE, 5/11/05, NY Times)
Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.Posted by Orrin Judd at May 11, 2005 8:36 AMBut from state after state they kept coming in, the one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.
It took some time before they had their answer: the players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory in Long Island City, Queens.
Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, said on Monday that the panic began at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.
The second-place winners were due $100,000 to $500,000 each, depending on how much they had bet, so paying all 110 meant almost $19 million in unexpected payouts, Mr. Strutt said. (The lottery keeps a $25 million reserve for odd situations.)
Of course, it could have been worse. The 110 had picked the wrong sixth number - 40, not 42 - and would have been first-place winners if they did.
I am surprised something like this has not happened earlier.
What would the "game" have done if all 110 players got all 6 numbers right? Raised taxes in the affected states? Asked D.C. for a bail-out? Issued bonds? Given the ticket holders promissory notes? Defaulted?
Of course, about 20 years ago, a group in PA tried to fix the lottery by using a hypodermic needle to inject gel into many of the ping-pong balls, and then 'bet' heavily on the unadulterated numbers. Had they been less greedy (i.e., kept the secret to only 4 or 5), they probably would have been able to pull it off. But they told too many friends.
Posted by: jim hamlen at May 11, 2005 9:27 AMI don't understand this. I thought payouts were a function of how much was bet in total and how many people played the winning numbers?
Posted by: Rick T. at May 11, 2005 10:00 AMActually, those people might have been lucky they only got 5 of 6. If they'd gotten all 6, they'd all have split the jackpot. The excerpt doesn't say how much that was (and I refuse to deal with the Times-Democrat's registration hoops) but it would have had to have been more than $19 million based on how much they got as second prize winners.
(To avoid this little problem, the "MegaMilllions" they have here in Washington splits the lower prizes, too. Cheapskates.)
California just agreed to join New York, Texas and a number of other states in the MegaMillions contest, which should jack up the jackpots even more. Then if they have a fortune cookie tidal wave of winners, it could really stress the contingency fund.
Posted by: John at May 11, 2005 1:21 PMIn college, I attended a lecture on the statistics of lottery-type games. The lecturer had studied a game (New York's lottery, I think) where over 100 million tickets were sold. Something like 20,000 people had played the numbers making an upwards diagonal line on the form. Imagine the riots at lottery HQ if 20,000 people who think they won $200M actually won $10K (probably paid out in installments over 20 years). Had everyone played randomly, each combo would have been played by 4 or 5 people.
In another incident studied, over 5,000 people played Manuel Noriega's booking number in the Florida lottery the day his mug shot appeared on the front page of most newspapers. If everyone had played that one randomly, nobody would have shared the same combination of numbers.
Posted by: Kevin Colwell at May 11, 2005 3:05 PM