DailyDirt: Beating The Odds

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Mar 21st 2012 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Everyone knows that the odds always favor the house, but every once in a while, someone figures out a way to beat the system. Here are just a few examples of clever folks who have succeeded and earned some significant winnings.

There are a lot of guys named Don Johnson (not just the actor from Miami Vice), but one of them beat the casino odds by negotiation... and has become the most famous blackjack player in the world. So far, he's won about $15 million in Atlantic City (and he's been banned from a lot of casinos now). [url]
Michael Larson studied the game show, Press Your Luck, and figured out that the show's Big Board wasn't random. Larson won $110,237 in cash and prizes -- which stood as a record for game show winnings until 2006 when it was broken on The Price is Right. [url]
Mohan Srivastava usually consults as a geological statistician, but he applied his statistical insights to scratch-off lottery tickets -- and figured out that he could make about $600 per day. He's not the only one who has discovered design flaws in scratcher tickets, so there could be more lotteries out there with crackable security. [url]
To find more interesting stuff on entrepreneurship, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Filed Under: blackjack, casinos, gambling, lottery tickets, press your luck, price is right, scratchers

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Anonymous Coward, 21 Mar 2012 @ 8:05pm

Press Your Luck
That story has been around for quite some time now. There was a TV special all about it, chronicling what happened, how he did it, and the view point of the other contestants, the people working the show, etc. They even had the other contestants back from that episode to show them how it was done and let them try to do it a little bit.

I'm not sure if the article talks about it, but the sad part is, the guy was a bit insane and ended up squandering away the money he won in an effort to use that money to "break" other contests/game shows like he did there.
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BentFranklin (profile), 21 Mar 2012 @ 9:55pm

Larson should have sorted the $1 bills, at least into, say, 100x $1000 bins. Might have been a lot easier to check.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 21 Mar 2012 @ 11:24pm

Not counting cards
The great thing about the Don Johnson story is that it had nothing to do with "counting cards," even though most people assume that's how you beat the house at blackjack...
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Michael Ho (profile), 21 Mar 2012 @ 11:32pm

Re: Press Your Luck
It's an old story, but a fascinating one, nonetheless. I fully expect there to be a movie loosely based on Larson's life -- somewhat like Punch Drunk Love.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2012 @ 1:39am

Re: Press Your Luck
Yeah you can find the story on it on youtube. He memorized it to a fucking T lol but he was so nervous he messed up the first time. After that there was no stopping him 500 and a spin 1000 and a spin and so on. It would have been funny as hell if they changed the programming on it and made him fail the next day. But you're right he blew it all and I'm pretty sure that guy is dead now from cancer. Smoking's bad mkay. "Even though my uncle (well great great or some shit) smoked and drank every day till he was 97" Died from a cut and letting it get infected. Exact quote he told the doctors. "You're not taking this leg because I'm taking it straight to hell with me." I can hardly remember what the guy looks like since I was only 10 but how could anyone ever forget such a quote rofl!
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