[Project Application] LotRuiner

[peteyreplies]

BIFFUD Project Application

As described in section 11.11.B of the BIFFUD Corporate Bylaws I (we) hereby invoke my (our) rights as a (a) sentient being(s) who has (have) not uploaded their mind(s) to the cloud for consideration of this project application by the BIFFUD Hive Mind. With this application I (we) submit my (our) interest in becoming a (a) Member(s) of BIFFUD and having this project supported and adored by all who can 🤔.

Project Information

• Project Name: LotRuiner
• Project Haiku:

first, scratch tickets
then, a glut of winnings
last, burn it all down

• Project Analogy: Disaster capitalism, but for the lottery

Project Description

What is your project? What is the goal?
The lottery is a regressive institution, a tax on the poor and financially insecure, that plays on their dreams and aspirations and then exploits the few winners for a public performance that eventually ruins their life.

What if we could win the lottery and undermine it at the same time?

The purpose of this project is to a) solve several prima facie 'user problems' in playing that lottery in the short term that b) accrues financial returns to BFD in the intermediate term and c) ironically destroys the lottery in the long term.

Step 1: Make playing the lottery more 'frictionless', and also more appealing from a privacy perspective

Playing the lottery remains bound to the experience of bringing $2 in cash to a 7/11 or, if you're really motivated, mailing a check to a state office for a subscription. This is a disappearing interactive experience.

Instead, we create an app that allows you to buy, or subscribe, to any lottery you choose through your phone, which reduces the friction of buying a ticket.

Critically, the user doesn't actually buy the ticket: instead, they give money to BFD, which reserves the ticket on their behalf.

If/when a ticket wins, BFD claims the ticket on the user's behalf, distributing the money to them and thus protecting their privacy and anonymity. This provides the primary appeal to users of why do this (beyond convenience).

Step 2: Accrue financial returns to BFD in the intermediate term

In return for convenience and claiming tickets, BFD takes a modest percentage of winning tickets, which increases at a gradual level on the marginal dollar until you approach something like 10% over $1m (the typical share taken by random north shore "10 percenter" families who will claim tickets on people's behalf).

Additionally, BFD could arbitrage annuities more aggressively than the state is willing to do, i.e. claim jackpot 20 year annuities and offer higher immediate payouts than the state while preserving the financial security of BFD (and its members) effectively in perpetuity.

Step 3: Ruin the lottery

The lottery maintains its social legitimacy by propagating the illusion that ordinary people win it. It does so primarily by making public, mythical figures of the 'everyday' people who win the lottery, get their picture taken, and then their lives ruined.

By intermediating the process and claiming the winnings by a faceless, trolly institution, trust in the lottery will finally dwindle and destroy it in the long term.

Bylaw Questions

How is this project a bad idea?

It maintains or perhaps even strengthens a regressive institution in the short term and then undermines a key (if problematic) source of revenue in the long term.

If this project were a D&D Character, what alignment would it be and why?

Alignment:

• Chaotic Good
  because it ultimately does good through chaos

Where are the lulz?

Systemic irony and enabling lots of bad decisions.

How does this project make people 🤔 (thinking face emoji)?

It causes people to question the social performances and exploitative institutions that both support and erode our democracy.

Who is Involved?

Sentient Being

• Name: Chris 'Petey' 'Please pay me' Peterson
• Twitter: peteyreplies
• Github ID: peteyreplies
• Skillz: bad idea generation, ability to buy tickets
• Project role / expectations: ideation, legal research
• Project stake: I had this idea 2 years ago and don't know what else to do with it

Bot Overlord

• Statement of Purpose:

Who will be the project's Comptroller?

I don't know what this means.

Is it realistic to implement through BIFFUD?

Maybe, but it's going to be more complicated than the last one. The thing is that different states have regulations about who can buy tickets. In MA, for example, they have really strange laws about a minimum number of food and drink sales you need in order to sell lotto tickets, which effectively restricts tickets to being sold at convenience and liquor stores.

We could solve this problem in two ways: one, by geographic arbitrage, i.e. buying tickets in states without this requirement; two, we buy a convenience store on behalf of Biffud.

Next Steps

Please attend the next scheduled BIFFUD plotting session to plead your case.
This issue will be updated with application status and next steps.

[knowtheory]

I would like to also suggest a softer version of this. Creating a trustworthy broker/advisor for people who've won the lottery could also help to capture more of the winnings & structure. Also might help folks who've won keep their money better.

Also could be an uphill battle tho

[slifty]

What if the winnings were evenly distributed among all the people who bought a ticket through the service?

[peteyreplies]

• @knowtheory that would upgrade from maybe chaotic good to lawful good
• @slifty I thought about that, and it's an interesting project and maybe more art/politics/thinking face and therefore BFDey. I just think it would end up disincentivizing use of the system because you'd be putting the same money in but have your upside reduced way way way down

[peteyreplies]

prior art: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/08/03/lawbreakers-just-really-lucky-mass-has-more-repeat-lottery-winners-than-any-other-state/UD2CzeJHJl5lO8R2WXftBN/story.html

Over the last six years, four members of the Jaafar family of Watertown have cashed in more than 7,000 winning lottery tickets and collected a cool $11 million.

[knowtheory]

@peteyreplies Oh i'm not saying abandon the dismantlement. That's definitely the chaotic side. I'm just saying, do some freelancing in the neutral/lawful good for maximum impact & lulz.

Subverting the lottery is definitely the chaotic and fun part.

[slifty]

Actually you would be investing in having increased odds. The expected value is similar.

$2 could buy you 1 chance at a million
$2 could buy you 2 chances at $500,000
$2 could buy you 20 chances at $5,000

The best part is that at some point $2 could buy you 1,000,000 chances at $1

[peteyreplies]

I’m bad at math, but doesn’t that assume the denominator is the same? I suppose if everyone uses our app then someone in the network winning helps, but back-of-the-envelope I think you end up with an EV still below the cost of the ticket. Maybe you give people options

…

On Jul 6, 2018, at 2:51 PM, Daniel Schultz ***@***.***> wrote: Actually you would be investing in having increased odds. The expected value is similar. $2 could buy you 1 chance at a million $2 could buy you 2 chances at $500,000 $2 could buy you 20 chances at $5,000 The best part is that at some point $2 could buy you 1,000,000 chances at $1 — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#70 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AD-vzR04CbuZtfPWIj7AKZbto0Q-xcksks5uD7GYgaJpZM4VFyXA>.

[slifty]

To be clear: the EV doesn't change at all -- the EV is always below the cost of the ticket (with or without our app)

Say a million people enter a million dollar lottery at $2 each.

The expected value in that case is 1 (entry) /1,000,000 (total entries) * $1,000,000 = $1

EV is already below ticket value (this is how lotteries are profitable)

Say we let you pool your entries, though, and you join ONE other person

2 (entries) / 1,000,000 (total entries) * $500,000 = $1

^ same expected value

Now sure, lets say the other person would never have bought a ticket without our app then the EV is slightly lower:

2 / 1,000,001 * $500,000 = .999999000001

But who's counting, right?

To be very clear, there IS A POINT at which a pool gets so big that, by buying into it, you are guaranteed to never make your money back -- {total payout} / {size of pool} < {cost of a ticket}.

But we could cap the size of pools / allow members of the pool to define how big the pool is.

[slifty]

Oh, another way to completely ruin lotteries.

Lottery payouts are published on scratch lottery tickets -- So when someone claims their winning of a major prize, that is public knowledge.

The total prize pool is predetermined and pre-published as well.

This means that at any given moment, the information is out there to be able to calculate the TRUE expected value of a scratch off ticket. You could know whether, for instance, all the grand prizes were already awarded for that $20 scratcher. The state would lose TONS of money if people stop buying tickets after the big prizes were gone.

That information should be part of this app, so people can know to avoid scratchers where the big payouts have already happened.

[peteyreplies]

I love the idea of something that democratizes (by doing the math on) the lottery Like if the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math, this app should work against it prior art: http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/31/a_lottery_game_with_a_windfall_for_a_knowing_few/ <http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/31/a_lottery_game_with_a_windfall_for_a_knowing_few/>

…

On Jul 6, 2018, at 3:13 PM, Daniel Schultz ***@***.***> wrote: Oh, another way to completely ruin lotteries. Lottery payouts are published on scratch lottery tickets. The total prize pool is predetermined and pre-published as well. This means that at any given moment, the information is out there to be able to calculate the TRUE expected value of a scratch off ticket. You could know whether, for instance, all the grand prizes were already awarded for that $20 scratcher. That information should be part of this app, so people can know to avoid scratchers where the big payouts have already happened. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#70 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AD-vzUaUDh_26zoI5lSrU5nd0gFAfR-1ks5uD7bigaJpZM4VFyXA>.

[peteyreplies]

Selling tickets:
e.g.

• http://nhlottery.com/Retailers.aspx
• application to be a retailer: http://nhlottery.com/Files/PDFs/Retailer_App_with_KENO.aspx
• note that this is only for physical sales of a terminal, and http://nhlottery.com/About-Us/FAQ.aspx says "Q: Can New Hampshire Lottery® tickets be purchased online over the internet?
  A: No, at this time, Lottery tickets cannot be purchased online over the internet; however, subscriptions can be purchased online here." linking to https://forms.nh.gov/lotterysubscriptions/
• do any states allow you to buy tix online?
• it looks like https://www.thelotter.com/lottery-tickets/ has humans in every location who buy tickets on your behalf; same with https://lottogopher.com/ which is taskrabbit but for buying lottery tickets for people
• http://time.com/money/4912356/all-the-ways-you-can-buy-powerball-tickets-online/ lists states where you can buy tickets online, but which require residents

[peteyreplies]

oh this is new:

If you prefer to play on your phone, there’s an app. LottoHUB, the official app of the Powerball and MegaMillions games, is available for both iPhone and Android-powered smartphones; you can use it to buy tickets directly, and you can even select a state to play from.

http://www.lotteryhub.com/dl-landing.php

...except their website doesn't say you can buy tickets online. It looks like maybe this is really just a way to see if you won?

[peteyreplies]

oh no the Powerball updated their website and make their FAQs made more "professional"

before they looked like this: https://web.archive.org/web/20160305013427/http://www.powerball.com/pb_contact.asp

• MY NUMBERS ARE: XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX; DID I WIN?* We can’t check numbers for a million folks a week. You can check your numbers on the web site. Teach a man to fish.

IS THERE A SECRET TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCE OF WINNING POWERBALL?
Yes. There is a way to improve your chance of winning the dual-drum games (Powerball, Mega-Millions, Hot Lotto, and Wild Card). But you have to promise to keep the secret - called THE BIG SECRET TO WINNING POWERBALL — between you and me.

First, we need to cover some things that don’t work. Swinging a live chicken above your head while wishing for the future numbers does NOT work. There is no improvement to be had by swinging a dead chicken. Although I have not tested it, swinging a bucket of extra crispy is not likely to work either. We have had winners who played their fortune cookie numbers - on two occasions - but such things are just bound to happen sometimes. It is also no good to follow the alignment of the planets or the arrangement of tea leaves or any other such thing. Any of these ideas will win sometimes, but that is just chance working its magic.

It is obvious that buying more tickets will help, but the odds are still high and hitting the jackpot is still a question of fate. The secret to the dual-drum games is that they pay a prize for matching just one number from the second drum. There are 35 numbers in Powerball’s second drum and so, if a group buys 35 tickets in the Powerball game, each with unique red Powerball number, then you are 100% guaranteed to win the $4 prize, at least. At first, that $4 might not seem like much, but if you think about it, you can see just how special this secret can be for a group. In a regular (pick 6) lotto game, a group can buy lots of tickets and sometimes never win anything. In Powerball (and the other dual-drum games), you can buy a set of tickets that will have a winner EVERY TIME. A lottery may occasionally offer special pricing on a ticket package, but why wait for the lottery to run a limited-time promotion? With this secret you can create your own discount (a rebate really) for EVERY draw.

This is a little pricy for most individual players, but if you are in a group you might consider covering all of the red balls.

I GOT AN EMAIL SAYING THAT I WON THE LOTTERY; IS IT LEGITIMATE?

NO. It is a common scam. We get over 100 emails letters and phone calls each week asking this question; and this has gone on for several years. We even get emails sent here telling us that we’ve won the Powerball. You never have to send money to collect a legitimate lottery prize. You should never reply to these emails. You should never send money to these people. You should never give your bank account number or your mother’s maiden name to anyone. You should never run with scissors. You may even be sent a check to cover the costs and then be asked to wire back some money. But the check will bounce (sometimes not for months and then you are charged with writing bad checks). It is best not to respond or you can be put on a list to receive other scams.

also: https://web.archive.org/web/20160305101449/http://www.powerball.com/real-letters.asp

Real Letters - and Answers. Here are some more questions and answers - not real common ones, but REAL ones nonetheless. Maybe you've had the same question too (well, maybe not).
FROM Debora W: i don't remember my powerball numbers. my name is debora w----The number is on your Powerball ticket. Your ticket is under the seat of your car, between the seat and the car door.