I am not trying to advertise, but you have to go to this site to see the intelligence of the up in coming generation.  We are definatlly fucking doomed...

http://www.battleforums.com/showthread.php?t=79420

I surrender!

Interestingly, it is possible to beat the lottery in certain situations, although not with time travel.

I remember reading an article about a man who made a 20% return on his lottery spendings:

It was one of those 3-ball things; they were doing a special promotion where over a period of a week, they drew an extra ball and if it was the special yellow one, they would draw a second set of 3 balls and both sets would be winners.  What happened was that they drew the six non-yellow balls the first six days, so that the yellow ball was guaranteed to be draw on the seventh day.  The man went out and bought (some obscene amount of money) worth of lottery tickets, buying every single number; because he was guaranteed two drawings, he won on two sets of numbers and made a 20% return.

It's much easier to watch on the news to see who wins, and then follow them home, hold them hostage steal his atm cards tell him to give you his PIN - and go take a bit of money and take your wife to a nice dinner.

Screw the lottery winner if you are goign to do that. The lottery does not pay off all at one time. You have to threaten to kill one of those new rich people who are the heads of small companies that are starting to gain strength.

I heard a story once that a guy in Australia bought every possible lottery ticket and, due to poor planning, I guess, the total winnings was more than he paid.  I don't know if it's true or not.

[quote author=iago link=topic=8900.msg82340#msg82340 date=1096327943]
I heard a story once that a guy in Australia bought every possible lottery ticket and, due to poor planning, I guess, the total winnings was more than he paid.  I don't know if it's true or not.
[/quote]
Was true, and if i remember it was spring this year or last. They had an atrical in the Toronto Sun about it, thats about all I remember about it.

[quote author=dRAgoN link=topic=8900.msg82377#msg82377 date=1096343185]
Was true, and if i remember it was spring this year or last. They had an atrical in the Toronto Sun about it, thats about all I remember about it.
[/quote]
So how did they expect to make a profit?

[quote author=drivehappy link=topic=8900.msg82462#msg82462 date=1096400308]
So how did they expect to make a profit?
[/quote]

The lottery was set up poorly, in such a way that the gain exceeded the loss.

Unless you mean the people who RUN the lottery, who were clearly stupid or made a mistake.