Massachusetts Cash WinFall roll-downs made some lottery tickets worth more than their price

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Standard lottery odds usually return only about 74 cents per dollar spent, but Massachusetts' Cash WinFall game, running from 2004 to 2012, had a rule that moved unclaimed jackpot money into smaller prizes once the jackpot hit $2 million without a winner. On 8 February 2010, a roll-down lifted the expected cash value of a $2 ticket from about 40 cents to roughly $2.14, according to the analysis. Large buyers, including syndicates, exploited this edge, but the outcome was far from guaranteed, since the more tickets sold, the higher the chance someone would hit the jackpot and cancel the roll-down. The article notes that a roll-down occurred only once in 45 instances, on 10 July 2008, when large bettors lost heavily. The piece argues that this structure differs fundamentally from casino games, whose house edge stays fixed.

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