And Srivastava, being a statistician worth his salt, accidentally solved the pattern on his lunch break. What occurred to him is that scratch tickets cannot be produced randomly, because that would enable the possibility of randomly generating a dozen billion-dollar winners that would crash the system. Harvey figured out, however, that the odds of guessing four or five numbers ran at a more comfortable 39,028 to 1. What that means is that you'd have to buy around 10 million tickets ($20 million total) to rig the jackpot in your favor, but then you'd only win back a 10th of your investment and whatever the price of smug satisfaction is. He tested his theory on the Massachusetts "Cash WinFall" state lottery, which sold tickets for $2, paid out $2 million, and offered odds of 9,366,819 to 1. Harvey simply realized that one person could still theoretically win the jackpot if they owned all of those less impressive tickets. That means that if no one person wins the jackpot (by guessing all six numbers), then the amount is equally distributed among those who guessed four or five numbers, which is statistically easier to do. His solution came from the fact that some lotteries use a "roll-down" system. Still, an MIT senior named James Harvey figured out a way to rig the lottery in his favor by using book smarts, which are the natural enemy of gambling magnates everywhere. We recommend cargo pants at all times, just to be safe. At that point, Ivey just needed to stay at that table long enough to get all of the cards "marked" the way he wanted, playing a bunch of low-stakes hands to get through the decks. If the card was of low value, she'd say "Buhao" ("bad card"), and ask the dealer to turn it sideways, meaning it would wind up rotated 180 degrees when placed back in the deck. If the card was a high-value card, she'd tell the dealer "Hao" (Mandarin for "good card") and instructed the dealer to turn it over like you normally would. Then, citing superstition, his accomplice would ask the dealer to deal cards a certain way. Ivey would start at low stakes, losing money while studying the backs of the cards. With all the pieces thus in place, the heist could begin. He also requested a Mandarin-speaking dealer for no discernible reason (Ivey is not Chinese) other than making the whole thing seem like as much of an Ocean's 11 caper as possible. In exchange for gambling a million dollars, he would get his own private table and have the cards shuffled by an automatic shuffler (to avoid having a dealer screw up his scheme by turning the cards). So he was able to use the promise of a huge profit to negotiate with the casino to get a baccarat game set up just the way he wanted. First, keep in mind that Ivey is what casinos call a "whale." Not because his table etiquette involves a family bucket of KFC, but because he's a bottomless pit of money, and high-rollers with gambling addictions are basically what keep casinos in operation.
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