Broken Lotteries | Wired Science (opens in new tab)

In these cases, yes. Of course there's also the more direct saying that lotteries are a tax on stupid people. But I don't see it that way. It's supposed to be a contract between a lot of poor people allowing one or more of them a chance at a "rich" life. If anything, it's a tax on desperate people.

The article from the old discussion mentioned that lottery merchants were violating a number of rules by letting these high-rolling customers run the ticket machines, etc. I wonder how they'll enforce this new rule if they had trouble enforcing the rest of them.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828122

The articles linked to in the OP (both of which have been discussed on HN before) provide a lot more detail.

To answer your specific question, Srivastava called the provincial lottery agency (iirc - it was Canadian) and asked 1) Would they send him a large number of tickets to use for a promotion / fundraiser, and 2) Would they "buy back" at face value any unused tickets. They said they would gladly do both - meaning he could examine before scratching, return unscratched, and also avoid lining up at the drug store to buy 10,000 tic-tac-toe tickets at once!

Edit: Previous discussions

Srivastava - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2166555 Cash WinFall - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2828122

No, that's exactly what lead to these situations. If you choose the winning tickets first, the player may have access to observed numbers of winners or your potential filler algorithm. That information must be accounted for by the design.