OK, inspired by several stories of people winning big in +EV lottery situations, I'm going to start my own thread focusing on the Michigan lottery.
The Michigan lottery has tons of scratch-off games that are usually hugely -EV. However, the state's lottery website tracks the number of winning tickets that are as of yet unclaimed here:
http://milottery.state.mi.us/msl-ig-trigps.php
Based on these numbers, it looks to me like the current #1 +EV MI scratch-off ticket to play is "Classic Black" (as of 8/3/11).
The prizes remaining for that game:
2 $500,000
3 $1,000
58 $200
104 $100
240 $75
228 $60
632 $50
856 $40
4,170 $30
4,944 $20
7,357 $15
14,569 $10
More info on that game:
http://www.michigan.gov/lottery/0,16...1131--,00.html
Now, if my math is correct (and I'd love for anyone so inclined to check it), there are currently 33,163 unclaimed prizes for this game. Since that second link above says that overall odds of winning are 1 in 2.74, I believe I can just multiply that amount by 2.74 to estimate that there are about 90,867 tickets yet to be purchased in this game (that's correct, right?).
The game costs $10, so buying up all of the rest of the tickets would cost $908,670. The total value of the unclaimed 33,163 prizes is $1,602,545.
Therefore each $10 ticket, according to these stats, has an EV of $17.64.
Obviously our concern would be that someone has hit a $500K jackpot but hasn't claimed the prize yet. Taxes would also need to be factored in for anyone planning to try to buy their way to a big prize. Other than that, am I logically missing something here, or is this really a pretty hugely +EV value?