In article <199511300621.WAA26406@netcom14.netcom.com>, Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com> wrote:

At 20:38 11/29/95 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:

...

Have to be _very_ careful here. A variety of scams can be developed which show lots of "small" winners, but which fail to show any large winners. The lottery operators can make a lot of extra bucks by simply not paying off the large winnings, in various ways.

With complete anonimity, the scam I would think of first is giving other nyms of myself all the big payoffs.

But with complete anonymity, no player knows who else is playing, let alone who won. So if you were going to pay off yourself, you may as well just pay off no one. The idea behind my proposal was that any participant can determine if he has won. The winning number (a hash of which was published beforehand, as in a "bit commitment" scheme) is announced. Anyone who picked a number that, say, matched in the last digit, wins $2. If you matched the last two digits, you win $10, etc. The house (without sacrificing reputation) can't arrange who the big payoffs will go to, nor can it (as I think Tim suggested) give out lots of small prizes and no big ones. - Ian