Virginia Lottery Ass-hattery
The following story appeared today on CNN:
When Scott Hoover bought a $5 scratch-off ticket in Virginia called “Beginner’s Luck” last summer, he carefully studied the odds. Even though he figured his chances of winning were a long shot, he felt the odds were reasonable.
Hoover, a business professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, wasn’t surprised when his tickets didn’t bring him the $75,000 grand prize, but he was shocked to learn the top prize had been awarded before he bought the ticket.
“I felt duped into buying these things,” Hoover said.
He discovered the Virginia State Lottery was continuing to sell tickets for games in which the top prizes were no longer available. Public records showed that someone had already won the top prize one month before Hoover played. He is now suing the state of Virginia for breach of contract.
It appears to me that this guy is a jackass, but I’m willing to entertain arguments to the contrary. Surely no one thinks the odds posted on the card mean that every player has an equal chance to win simpliciter. They mean (suppose) one ticket in a million is a big winner, not that Hoover at his local 7-11 has a one in a million chance to win all things considered. “All things considered” surely includes the fact that the winning card is not, as a matter of fact, in that store. If it’s not there, it’s not there a moment before Hoover buys the card. The fact that Hoover would not have a winner was determined by a complicated set of conditions involving card marking, shuffling and distribution before he even bought the card In a real sense, Hoover didn’t have a chance to win, even if the winner hadn’t purchased his card yet. It only seemed he had a chance to win because he didn’t know the determining information when he bought his card. But, of course, the situation is no different if the winning card is actually scratched: he has no more of a chance in one case than the other, and his apparent chances at the moment of purchase are identical, since in both cases his winning is consistent with the information he knows. If the game is fair in one case, it seems it should be fair in another.
I suppose a case could be made that the entertainment value of playing depends upon the idea that everyone playing is simultaneously in a state of ignorance about the outcomes, but that has nothing to do with the fairness of the game, and it is a false assumption anyway since people who have played several times and failed to win knew something about the outcomes (and the odds) than Hoover didn’t.
I wonder, does Hoover ever watch sports on Tivo? Would he be willing to make bets on a match before he watched it but after it was played? Hmmm. I say Jackass. Anyone second the motion?