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> In April 2023, an entity called Rook TX effectively purchased the jackpot, collecting a one-time payment of $57.8 million, by acquiring virtually all of the 2
by adiabatichottub 2y ago
> In April 2023, an entity called Rook TX effectively purchased the jackpot, collecting a one-time payment of $57.8 million, by acquiring virtually all of the 25.8 million possible number combinations. The operation was planned in Malta and funded by a London betting company. It was carried out by four Texas retailers, all connected to online sales companies called couriers.
Well, as the saying goes, "It takes money to make money."
- smelendez 2y agoLottery couriers are companies that will buy and scan lottery tickets for you for a fee. Most of the time, they're not actually doing much courier work. If you win a small amount, they'll cash the ticket for you and credit it to your account, and if you win a big enough amount that you have to cash it in directly with the state, they'll actually deliver you the winning ticket. It's basically a workaround for restrictions on online lottery sales. I'm not sure how states should handle online lottery gambling—there are a lot of considerations around addiction, potential fraud, money laundering, and erosion of retailer lottery revenue and shopper base—but I don't think this is it.
- ryoshu 2y agoA friend is working on a system that automates scratch off tickets and uses computer vision to detect winners. Not sure what the end product is.
- withinboredom 2y agowhy.... not just give the user the ability to see it and evaluate? Why the AI?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y agoI assume the opportunity is doing this in huge volume. Getting a cheap computer to make the initial call is faster than relying on teams of humans.
- Almondsetat 2y agoThe Gambl-o-Matic?
- rigrassm 2y agoThe Texas lottery has an app you can use to scan the tickets unique barcodes printed under the scratch off layer and find out if and how much the ticket won. Haven't ever dug into it but the app doesn't require a login to use that function so I'm willing to bet there's an unauthenticated API endpoint that could be sniffed out (they may possibly have it documented somewhere too). Outside of being a fun itch to scratch, using the app directly is fast enough with very little effort.
- pests 2y agoIn Michigan lottery tickets have (used to?) a one letter code somewhere in the blank area that gives you the winning amount. I used to be careful not to scratch non-play areas back when my grandfather owned a store as it might reveal the winning amount. Might be useful.
- thefreeman 2y agoit’s literally encoded into the barcode there is no api involved
- nosioptar 2y agoIt'd be better to scan the barcode that lotto machines scan to determine if it won. It's possible, but rare, to get a misprint where the ticket does not have winning symbols, but scans as a winner. I pick up and scan any scratchers I find littered near stores. I've made a few hundred dollars over the years on misprints like that.
- JamesSwift 2y agoWhat are you referencing to know if its a winner? You just bring them in and ask to scan?
- vuln 2y agoIn the US most places have a little reader thing that scans the barcode and tells you how much you’ve won. This helps cut down on the time it takes the cashier to scan each one. You know instantly if you’re a winner, no need to look at symbols. For a visual version of the above. Go check out Mr Beast’s video where they scratch off 1,000,000 dollars worth of scratch offs. The ending wasn’t surprising to me but may be to some.
- IncreasePosts 2y agoA very common, sad sigjt in rundown areas is some old person, clearly with limited funds, standing at the lotto counter in a convenience store, just rapid fire scanning scratch-offs. And then buying more scratch offs and rapid fire scanning them, etc.
- znkynz 2y agoHow are customers protected against sellers pre-scanning tickets to find winner? In my location, winners can only be determined by scanning the barcode, and entering a value hidden under the scratch panel.
- harrall 2y agoIn California, you can just scan with the app. I don’t even play the game on the scratcher sometimes.
- Carrok 2y agoThis is peak late stage capitalism.
- justinclift 2y ago> Not sure what the end product is. Money? :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- criddell 2y agoNow this story that popped up last week makes some sense: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/27/texas-senate-lottery-tickets-couriers-ban/ https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/27/texas-senate-lottery...
- conductr 2y agoIt’s a dumb politician response too. They bought $26m in tickets, they could have bought a plane ticket to buy them in person at a 7-11 in Texas.
- tarentel 2y agoA lot of people are focusing on the courier aspect of all this which is fine, but I didn't know there were any lotteries you could just outright win, with a profit, if you had enough money to buy enough tickets. I assumed people would design lotteries where the cost/reward ratio was such that this would never make sense.
- mtremsal 2y agoIIRC the remaining risk lies in multiple people winning or attempting arbitrage simultaneously, thus dividing the expected revenue by the number of winners. So not a free lunch.
- cgriswald 2y agoIIRC, there was at least one case where the lottery got wise that this was happening and refused to sell the parties involved any more tickets. They had enough tickets for better than even odds, but not a guarantee. IIRC, they won.
- genewitch 2y agoOn its face this sounds like it makes sense but why would the lottery care, at all? They get money per ticket, a story that buying lots of tickets increases your chances of winning, it's win win win for them.
- jamesfinlayson 2y agoI believe it's a marketing/psychology thing - people like to hear stories about how people like them won (busy person wins big from inexpensive last minute purchase) because they can relate and are more likely to buy a ticket in the next draw. Hearing that some international syndicate with big money and clever mathematicians won makes the everyman think that a big win is out of reach for them.
- bufordsharkley 2y agoI remember a 1990s lottery event in which a "buy all combinations" was attempted, but their physical machines they acquired were partially deficient, and they simply couldn't physically acquire enough tickets in time (as the procedure was relatively time intensive), but they still won with something like a 75% probability of success
- bena 2y agoThat number seems wrong. The number of combinations should be 54 x 53 x 52 x 51 x 50 x 49. Which is 18.6 billion-ish. What am I missing here?
- teraflop 2y agoYou're overcounting by a factor of 6! = 720, because you're counting different orderings of the same numbers multiple times. "1,2,3,4,5,6" and "6,5,4,3,2,1" are not different tickets.
- bena 2y agoShit, I see what you're getting at. With 54 x 53 x 52 ... you get all of the permutations of all the sequences. It generates 1,2,3..., 2,1,3..., 3,1,2..., etc. Yeah, I missed that. And each sequence has 6! permutations. Etc.
- fisian 2y agoMathematically, what you need is the binomial coefficient ("n choose k"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_coefficient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_coefficient
- madcaptenor 2y agoDivide by 6!=720 because the order doesn’t matter.
- gblargg 2y ago> by acquiring virtually all of the 25.8 million possible number combinations That must have been tense knowing they didn't purchase that last fraction of a percent.
- ronyeh 2y agoLike when you use that last discard to attempt to draw the flush five.
- qingcharles 2y agoYeah, I'd be sweating thinking about the last handful that were missed.
- omoikane 2y agoAccording to[1], Rook TX bought 99.3% of all possible number combinations. I couldn't find a site that says why the last 0.7% was missed. Maybe they meant to buy all the tickets, but due to logistical errors or whatever, they discovered they missed a few? [1] https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2025/02/27/texas-lottery-chief-thwarted-second-bulk-buy-for-lotto-jackpot/80486232007/ https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2025/02/... Paywalled, but looks like archive.is has it: https://archive.is/256Hz https://archive.is/256Hz