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This reminds me of the WinFall lottery [0], where if no one got a grand prize, the prize money was rolled over to the next week. As a result, if there were enou

This reminds me of the WinFall lottery [0], where if no one got a grand prize, the prize money was rolled over to the next week. As a result, if there were enough prizes rolled over to the next week the lottery could actually have a positive expected value, so groups of people started spending millions on tickets in these weeks. The lottery organizers didn't really even care much, since the people spending millions on tickets just increased their profitss. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/how-mit-students-gamed-the-lottery/470349/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/how-mit...

chrismcb 6y ago
Of course they shoukdnt care, because, if I remember correctly, it was only a positive payout if someone didn't win. Basically what it was doing was spreading the rollover along all winners" rather than growing the main jackpot. So the organizers were paying out the same amount of prize money.just under a different distribution.
8bitsrule 6y ago
An idea for lottery payouts that are fun for a lot more people. Set a top-prize limit - say $50M. Now suppose the jackpot has risen to $200M. When someone claims the top prize, pay them the $50M. Then select 150 more winning numbers, randomly picked from the numbers sold, and pay each $1M. Or pay out 1500 $100,000 winners.