well, for once, just because it works it doesn't mean it's worth it. a couple of years ago i read a story about a man who cracked a scratch-off lottery ticket c

well, for once, just because it works it doesn't mean it's worth it. a couple of years ago i read a story about a man who cracked a scratch-off lottery ticket code (the serial numbers were biased). he could have earned more than with his day job if he devoted his time fully to gaming the system, but ... it decided it wasn't good enough - a mindless, robotic task, ending in misery soon. the take away of the story was that the method was probably known by crime syndicates and used for money laundering, as they have cheap pseudo-slave labour available. but if you're a well educated person with a fulfulling job, you'd go insane soon (and of course, job security - the second the company changes their system you're out). so with betting, you'd have to invest a lot of time and energy for it to become profitable. as he wrote, you'd have to be at the race tracks and wait until the last possible moment, then driving to the next stadium. and if it was _that_ easy to create a real winning system that depended on local help, the swedes would do it themselves - so your hired goons might stay as long as they needed to understand your system and then continue on their own (lowering your margins in the process). if the process could be completely automated, i.e. with online betting, the story might be different. but i'm sure there are already a lot of syndicates looking into that (even the analog version). for them it doesn't even have to be profitable. 80% return is good enough for money laundering and they can out-finance the legal competition.