A group of recent Princeton graduates has won more than $6M in 66 lottery wins
Quant guy here. This boils down to information about the game, and maybe tax laws.<p>You have a load of scratch cards out there, most of them duds. If you come to a situation where a prize hasn&#x27;t been claimed and there&#x27;s few cards left to be sold, it&#x27;s like counting Blackjack cards, the odds might change in your favour, or in favour of everyone who buys any ticket.<p>If that happens you need to do a bit of optimizing risk, assuming you have a limited amount of money to potentially lose. Kelly Criterion will have something to say here.<p>It really depends a lot on the details of the game. Are prizes rolled over if nobody found a winning card? Do cards expire? Is there a bulk buying discount? What is the nature of randomization? Does every region get its own guaranteed share of winners?<p>And crucially, is there information released about the progress of the game? This is maybe the toughest bit to figure out. With quant hedge funds you get this thing where you have to do a lot of asking questions about how the data was collected, to ensure your assumptions hold.<p>Tax I mentioned since it seems they formed a limited company. That&#x27;s a whole game in itself, played by many many corporate entities in differing situations. You&#x27;d need to understand that as well. I know some traders whose entire jobs depend on understanding the difference between the tax codes of different countries.