On: A rogue Romanian economist legally gamed the lotte...

[eximius]

While true, expected value isn't necessarily a useful metric at that point.

If I have a one in a googol chance of winning a googolplex dollars, it doesn't really matter that the expected value is going to be huge, I still won't win anything because I'll be insolvent before the requisite number of tries to have a reasonable chance of winning.

[tunesmith → eximius]

Yeah, the Kelly Criterion is a good thing to explore in situations like this. If there's (truly) positive EV, you still should only spend a certain percentage of your bankroll on the bet. And if the bet has high payoff and low odds, your bankroll likely has to be astronomical in order for the bet to be a good decision.

[solotronics → eximius]

thats why the people who do this work as a company and pool their resources

[grkvlt → solotronics]

It's more that the people who do this do more than just buying a single ticket with positive expected value - as described in the article.

[grkvlt → eximius]

True, +EV is useless if the variance is huge, as is the case with lotteries.