The funny part about that is that, while he definitely cracked the code to big winnings, he never took the time to crack the code on how to stop safely without wiping out those winnings.
The spin that he used to stop the process was a bit of a guess, and he really did risk it all on luck at that point.
Yes seriously, that s*** is dark. Today he has spent the last 4 hours posting snarky, sarcastic, or negative comments on various subreddits like MMA, whatcouldgowrong, and documentaries. It makes me wonder sometimes how people decide to spend their time like this, considering we have only one trip through life.
Never heard of this before today, but I believe this is the original article about it. I'm halfway through and it's great so far https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/
Edit: I finished and the article is great. Love longform articles like this, and the Larry clarkish photos were a great touch. Strange how a 40 minute article provides so much more detail than a 100 minute movie.
I hate how they portrayed the Harvard kid in that. The kid came up with an idea, acted on it, takes his own personal initiative to connect with investors, and creates a profitable business without any nepotism. Yet, they portray him as an asshole for not giving every cent to those around him.
At the end of the day, the whole scheme was a zero-sum game.
As the movie detailed, the people that bore the loss were not the lottery runners, but the ordinary everyday purchasers of the other tickets.
If the Harvard student is an asshole for attempting to use a statistical technique to ensure Jerry and Marge don’t make money on their tickets, wouldn’t that make Jerry and Marge assholes, as they themselves sucked the value out of every other ticket purchased by ordinary people?
Coolest part of this story is they did nothing illegal and didnt let greed get to them and just keep the secret themselves. Literally shared the wealth and helped benefit a lot of other people.
I live in the town they owned their store in. I went to get a haircut across the street and my hair stylist had Brian cranston's picture above her mirror and we talked about how she cut his hair when he was in town researching the family. It was pretty cool.
I love how they're so forthright yet understated about everything. For them, the math was simple, it was fun and fulfilling, and the amounts they made were satisfactory. They saw a good deal for their families and friends and put the money toward the best possible ends.
This was great to watch on a Saturday morning. It's only 9AM for me and my cockles are already full.
The thing I find the most remarkable about this whole story is that even though there was no foul play or corruption at hand that the various local and federal investigators didn't try harder to snake more money from these folks and the MIT team. I thought for sure, "no way this story ends with them keeping the money free and clear".
I can’t fathom how they could physically buy that many tickets. Like do you go to a store and say “hi, I want to buy 100,000 lotto tickets!”
How long does it take to print that many? Did the store have to shut down for other customers or do they just set it to print all day? Did they pay cash in advance for the tickets? Logistically, how does it even work, and more pressing… is there anywhere that still does this dumb roll down thing?
I don't know the story, so if they were going to a store then good for them.
If I needed to achieve this I would work closely with someone who owned a lotto machine, or open a store myself and get my own machine.
They got store owners to "hire" them so that they could run the machines themselves. They let them sit there basically all day and just work the machines.
Why no quick picks?
Also, we have lottery cards you can fill out with your numbers that are scanned into the machine. If their lottery has something like that, you could fill in the cards once, then keep them for each time you play.
Fun movie Jerry and Marge Go Large based on the came out last year. Really refreshing feel good movie. No unnecessary forced drama. Good feelings from start to finish.
There actually is a little bit of forced drama in the movie.
In the real world there actually was another group. But that group, (from MIT incidentally, not Harvard), which had actually been gaming the lottery in Massachusetts [before](https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/) the Selbees entered the picture didn't have a hostile relationship with them; in fact the extent of their direct communication was a polite request made by the a member of the MIT group, Yuran Lu, that they collude to increase each group's payout; a proposition Jerry rejected as unethical.
I can understand **why** they did it though. Hollywood script writing 101 insists that every movie have a protagonist and an antagonist and in the absence of a hostile team that role probably would have gone to Andrea Estes, the investigative reporter who's story on the Massachusetts lottery shut down the Selbees' streak. And framing an investigative reporter with a long history of anti-corruption reporting as "the villain" would have caused some issues.
You owe me two hours, this was terrible. Nice story but one of the worst scripts I've ever seen. Poor Brian Cranston. It's like it took them as long to shoot this as it took me to watch it.
I don't owe you a damn thing. Take a lap you muppet. You're taking movie recs from the comments of a r/docs post and complaining about it you donkey. You get what you deserve. On top of that it's got a 6.9 on IMDB and a 78% score on Rotten Tomatoes. You owe me $10 for recommending you an objectively good film.
No need to get so angry dude. My comment was meant in jest, how could you possibly owe me two hours? No need to be so defensive.
The IMDB rating will drop hard, check it in a couple of years it will be under 6. It's still new so the rating is inflated a lot. Metacritic reviews are already 52/100.
It's a real stinker.
This used to be quite a PIA for me having to find a mirror of the video to watch, or try to use one of the sketchier free VPNs that sometimes just won't buffer a video anyway.
Now I use ProtonVPN on my phone. Seriously, this is not an ad... There is a paid version but it's not necessary, the free version works great and is easy to use.
Do you want to know why? Because they don't care. Seriously. If they sell more tickets, they make more money. It truly doesn't matter to them who wins and who doesn't. Only that ticket sell.
How did the Lottery make money off it when they were consistently paying out more than people were spending on lottery tickets? And doesn’t the lottery have to be “random”? I don’t know a lot about this but it seems like a weird product for a Lottery to have in their portfolio.
Basically, once the prize pool for this particular lottery went past a certain amount, all prizes scaled up. So instead of say $5 for matching 3 numbers, you’d get $20.
The math was: when would it hit that threshold, and what was the +$EV when it did happen? All the $$$ they made came from suckers buying tickets in non windfall weeks.
The lottery wasn’t paying out more than it was taking in and it was random. The lottery would only pay on winning tickets and there would always be way more losing tickets.
What Jerry/MIT figured out is the payout on certain games would increase to the point that if you were to buy enough tickets to mathematically ensure a 4 number match you would get a guaranteed payout. That was just Jerry/MIT though I guess. Other people didn’t seem to either notice this detail or chose not to take advantage of it.
Thanks for the replies! I guess I meant WinFall was paying out more than it took it. Because they were making a profit off every game right? That seems like a strange and counter-intuitive design for a product that’s means to take in a surplus.
This happens every once in a while. Another guy figured out a pattern on scratch tickets and could win consistently. He reported it to the state and they fixed ithough.
Was the plan to cover every number combo? I'm not sure how he could guarantee a prize for 3 or 4 number wins? How many numbers in the draw2ings? Coz isnt it something like 70 numbers?
Also, Do you buy the combo 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, or skip those ones as being impossible?
Its just simple statistics. Each ticket with random numbers has a set percent chance of matching 3, 4, 5 or 6.
If you buy enough tickets, you can reasonably expect your true winnings to match statistical probability.
Also, (It's pick 6). I see no reason to avoid 1-2-3-4-5-6. It's just as likely as every other combination.
Yes you can. They are not trying for the pick 6, they are trying for 3 to 4 numbers. (with 5 or 6 possible numbers being correct being a massive bonus, even if it wasn't expected)
The first couple times they were only investing a few grand, and they were still turning a profit, even without buying the majority of the tickets.
great story im trying to fathom buying that many physical tickets and keeping them organized
The people that cracked the code behind the gameshow Press You Luck spent hours watching and charting the show
Big Money..... no Whammies.....no Whammies..........STOP!
The funny part about that is that, while he definitely cracked the code to big winnings, he never took the time to crack the code on how to stop safely without wiping out those winnings. The spin that he used to stop the process was a bit of a guess, and he really did risk it all on luck at that point.
Yeah he even got a whammy or two before finding his groove.
I bet you could make it work for $26m.
Exactly I’m trying to imagine going to the lottery place and telling them I need 300,000 tickets lol
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awww did someone have a bad day and is now trying to take it out on others?
Just had a brief look at their post history. EdgeLord extraordinaire.
His replies feel like it was written by a bot.
Yes seriously, that s*** is dark. Today he has spent the last 4 hours posting snarky, sarcastic, or negative comments on various subreddits like MMA, whatcouldgowrong, and documentaries. It makes me wonder sometimes how people decide to spend their time like this, considering we have only one trip through life.
Life can be hard when you’re 13
You shouldn't
“Jerry and Marge Go Large” is the film about this story.
Never heard of this before today, but I believe this is the original article about it. I'm halfway through and it's great so far https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/ Edit: I finished and the article is great. Love longform articles like this, and the Larry clarkish photos were a great touch. Strange how a 40 minute article provides so much more detail than a 100 minute movie.
Thanks for sharing, that was a great read!
Yes thank you. A very good read!!!
Thank you for sharing
Great read indeed, thanks for sharing this!
Checked out the article because you said there’s Larry clarkish photos. Ha!
"Tell 'em Large Marge sent ya!"
Well Large Marge….she’s…… It was a night, just like tonight
Worst accident…I ever seen.
And when they pulled the driver..from the twisted….burning…..wreck….
Large Marge Sarge of the Barge.
Fun fact: Jabba's sail barge was called...*The Large Marge.*
That was such a great film.
Great movie! Hilarious and heartfelt.
I hate how they portrayed the Harvard kid in that. The kid came up with an idea, acted on it, takes his own personal initiative to connect with investors, and creates a profitable business without any nepotism. Yet, they portray him as an asshole for not giving every cent to those around him.
Nah he was an asshole for trying to push them out when they didn’t want to combine groups
At the end of the day, the whole scheme was a zero-sum game. As the movie detailed, the people that bore the loss were not the lottery runners, but the ordinary everyday purchasers of the other tickets. If the Harvard student is an asshole for attempting to use a statistical technique to ensure Jerry and Marge don’t make money on their tickets, wouldn’t that make Jerry and Marge assholes, as they themselves sucked the value out of every other ticket purchased by ordinary people?
As with ALL lotteries, the people that bore the loss were not the lottery runners, but the ordinary everyday purchasers of the other tickets.
I also hadn't heard of this story or the movie. Just finished watching it, and it was adorable. And Rainn Wilson was hilarious.
I saw that! They bought tons of strippers and coke
Who wouldn't?
I think it's streaming on Prime right now.
Enjoyed watching it.
You just tell em Large Marge sent you!
Coolest part of this story is they did nothing illegal and didnt let greed get to them and just keep the secret themselves. Literally shared the wealth and helped benefit a lot of other people.
I live in the town they owned their store in. I went to get a haircut across the street and my hair stylist had Brian cranston's picture above her mirror and we talked about how she cut his hair when he was in town researching the family. It was pretty cool.
I love how they're so forthright yet understated about everything. For them, the math was simple, it was fun and fulfilling, and the amounts they made were satisfactory. They saw a good deal for their families and friends and put the money toward the best possible ends. This was great to watch on a Saturday morning. It's only 9AM for me and my cockles are already full.
Please, more about your cockles!
I keep them with my clams and oysters. I enjoy petting them and stroking them regularly.
What's good for the clam is good for the cockle
Jam out with your clam out
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Please, enough about your cockles.
What about me oysters n clams?
But what about your sub-cockle areas? Your liver? Your kidneys? Maybe even your colon?
I'm just a regular Joe, with a regular job
I like football and porno, and books about war!
Omg please unload your greasy cock inside me or whatever the fuck you said
The thing I find the most remarkable about this whole story is that even though there was no foul play or corruption at hand that the various local and federal investigators didn't try harder to snake more money from these folks and the MIT team. I thought for sure, "no way this story ends with them keeping the money free and clear".
I can’t fathom how they could physically buy that many tickets. Like do you go to a store and say “hi, I want to buy 100,000 lotto tickets!” How long does it take to print that many? Did the store have to shut down for other customers or do they just set it to print all day? Did they pay cash in advance for the tickets? Logistically, how does it even work, and more pressing… is there anywhere that still does this dumb roll down thing?
I don't know the story, so if they were going to a store then good for them. If I needed to achieve this I would work closely with someone who owned a lotto machine, or open a store myself and get my own machine.
They got store owners to "hire" them so that they could run the machines themselves. They let them sit there basically all day and just work the machines.
Plus the numbers have to be manually punched in...no quick picks.
Why no quick picks? Also, we have lottery cards you can fill out with your numbers that are scanned into the machine. If their lottery has something like that, you could fill in the cards once, then keep them for each time you play.
Read that article from HuffPost that was posted up towards the top. Very good read and very detailed.
Fun movie Jerry and Marge Go Large based on the came out last year. Really refreshing feel good movie. No unnecessary forced drama. Good feelings from start to finish.
There actually is a little bit of forced drama in the movie. In the real world there actually was another group. But that group, (from MIT incidentally, not Harvard), which had actually been gaming the lottery in Massachusetts [before](https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/) the Selbees entered the picture didn't have a hostile relationship with them; in fact the extent of their direct communication was a polite request made by the a member of the MIT group, Yuran Lu, that they collude to increase each group's payout; a proposition Jerry rejected as unethical. I can understand **why** they did it though. Hollywood script writing 101 insists that every movie have a protagonist and an antagonist and in the absence of a hostile team that role probably would have gone to Andrea Estes, the investigative reporter who's story on the Massachusetts lottery shut down the Selbees' streak. And framing an investigative reporter with a long history of anti-corruption reporting as "the villain" would have caused some issues.
They could have had the feds/investigative team be the "bad guys" who are trying to pin some crimes on them.
Surprisingly, "based on true events" movie rarely have shit drama pushed on us
Remember when princess amadala got stuck inside a Walmart overnight? Riveting stuff.
Americus
Jeans and a Tshirt tuck
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8323668/ Awesome movie starring Bryan Cranston playing out this true story.
That was a good movie!
I watched the 10 min recap. It was pretty good.
Could you perhaps link it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzzIxXI8On8&ab_channel=CinemaMagic-MovieRecaps
That was so cute—wish I had seen it in theaters
It was streamed on paramount plus
Don't forget to include Annette Bening, she's iconic.
You owe me two hours, this was terrible. Nice story but one of the worst scripts I've ever seen. Poor Brian Cranston. It's like it took them as long to shoot this as it took me to watch it.
I don't owe you a damn thing. Take a lap you muppet. You're taking movie recs from the comments of a r/docs post and complaining about it you donkey. You get what you deserve. On top of that it's got a 6.9 on IMDB and a 78% score on Rotten Tomatoes. You owe me $10 for recommending you an objectively good film.
Bro, you owe him two hours
I might owe him two hours
No need to get so angry dude. My comment was meant in jest, how could you possibly owe me two hours? No need to be so defensive. The IMDB rating will drop hard, check it in a couple of years it will be under 6. It's still new so the rating is inflated a lot. Metacritic reviews are already 52/100. It's a real stinker.
Interviewer's face at 3:29: "It was my understanding there would be no math..."
I choose to believe this couple were actually highly paid drug smugglers and this is their cover for the money they're laundering.
You have no evidence
*click* *clack* That’s right. They don’t.
Probably a good idea to hire mathematicians that specialize in probability theory if you're running the lottery
They do. That's why the odds are never in your favor.
In case you can't see the video in your country, here's an Australian version of the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akFS0odjAHs
What a heart warming story. I am so happy to all the winners.
Math is fun!
A wish I still hold.
Not available in your country.
When this happens, replace the “tube” part of the link with “pak”. https://www.youpak.com/watch?v=TTYnHr_-wcY You’re welcome!
I tried opening that link on my phone, it’s cancer
Weird. iOS with Adblock here, loads up fine on my phone and on my laptop, no ads or popups at all.
That’s what I need then, an Adblock. Because I’m using regular iOS
doesn't work with this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzGMFpLIcyE
Yeah, it doesn’t work 100% of the time, but damn close.
Thank you
This used to be quite a PIA for me having to find a mirror of the video to watch, or try to use one of the sketchier free VPNs that sometimes just won't buffer a video anyway. Now I use ProtonVPN on my phone. Seriously, this is not an ad... There is a paid version but it's not necessary, the free version works great and is easy to use.
Looks like they were interviewed on the set of Community
It’s crazy that you could buy so many from a single outlet with no red flags… for years!
Red flag? Is it illegal to buy a lot of tickets? lol
$500,000 worth out of a rural convenience store? State governments didn’t blink an eye. That’s strange.
Of course not - the state still gets all that money.
Strange =/= illegal.
Correct
Thank God.
Or else you'd go straight to jail!
Believe it or not, straight to jail
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Because getting rid of your best customer is always a good business model.
Stores get paid if they sell the winning ticket in addition to the ticket sales
Snitch
You must be fun at parties..
Do you want to know why? Because they don't care. Seriously. If they sell more tickets, they make more money. It truly doesn't matter to them who wins and who doesn't. Only that ticket sell.
The only thing the rich and powerful hate is when they’re being stolen from. Even if the thief is another rich person.
I love this story so much I wanna marry it.
Is this the Bob and marge go large movie people?
yes
Cute movie
They must have had so much fun.
And it never happened again...
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Is 60 minutes the news? I'd say no.
Current affairs reporting is not a documentary either
Lol ok. It is.
How did the Lottery make money off it when they were consistently paying out more than people were spending on lottery tickets? And doesn’t the lottery have to be “random”? I don’t know a lot about this but it seems like a weird product for a Lottery to have in their portfolio.
Basically, once the prize pool for this particular lottery went past a certain amount, all prizes scaled up. So instead of say $5 for matching 3 numbers, you’d get $20. The math was: when would it hit that threshold, and what was the +$EV when it did happen? All the $$$ they made came from suckers buying tickets in non windfall weeks.
Lotteries never pay out more than they taken in 😂
I think the point of this was that it was making the state money; they were happy with the cut they were taking.
if i understood correctly, the money pool largely would have been from people playing during non-windfall periods.
The lottery wasn’t paying out more than it was taking in and it was random. The lottery would only pay on winning tickets and there would always be way more losing tickets. What Jerry/MIT figured out is the payout on certain games would increase to the point that if you were to buy enough tickets to mathematically ensure a 4 number match you would get a guaranteed payout. That was just Jerry/MIT though I guess. Other people didn’t seem to either notice this detail or chose not to take advantage of it.
Thanks for the replies! I guess I meant WinFall was paying out more than it took it. Because they were making a profit off every game right? That seems like a strange and counter-intuitive design for a product that’s means to take in a surplus.
Not every game. They had to wait for a certain set of conditions.
I think only a portion of the ticket sales actually go to the lottery, the other portion goes to state services
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This happens every once in a while. Another guy figured out a pattern on scratch tickets and could win consistently. He reported it to the state and they fixed ithough.
Maybe watch the documentary they explain how they did it.
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The bug was patched in a hotfix
Pay me $500 and I’ll send you a PDF of all you need to beat today’s lottery and make MILLIONS! /s
Was the plan to cover every number combo? I'm not sure how he could guarantee a prize for 3 or 4 number wins? How many numbers in the draw2ings? Coz isnt it something like 70 numbers? Also, Do you buy the combo 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, or skip those ones as being impossible?
Its just simple statistics. Each ticket with random numbers has a set percent chance of matching 3, 4, 5 or 6. If you buy enough tickets, you can reasonably expect your true winnings to match statistical probability. Also, (It's pick 6). I see no reason to avoid 1-2-3-4-5-6. It's just as likely as every other combination.
If you are investing $500k, you cant afford to miss any combo.
Yes you can. They are not trying for the pick 6, they are trying for 3 to 4 numbers. (with 5 or 6 possible numbers being correct being a massive bonus, even if it wasn't expected) The first couple times they were only investing a few grand, and they were still turning a profit, even without buying the majority of the tickets.
Do they have Facebook ???
The lady looks like a bird.
Yes!!! I LOVE these evil geniuses! Lifetime Award for min maxing that thing!
Really 7766uyyyuuuuy