That's why those grandmas lose money most of the time. One day a smart grandma will figure out how to game those machines too; it's an open-ended puzzle left to the world. They may build a better machine, and the world will again build a better grandma over time.

The world and economy is a system with rules and ethics, and entrepreneurs game that system within those rules and ethical bounds. Ping-pong wasn't first played with the intention of having back-spins and side-spins, but spin balls are perfectly within the written rules and are supposed to confuse and defeat your opponent.

If you want to have an edge at rock-paper-scissors, it's all about statistically analyzing and gaming your opponent, because humans are extremely bad at being uniformly random. There are tournaments for this. It's just humans being intelligent beings.

These students are gaming the lottery just the same.

Rules are rules; game and engineer the hell out of anything within those bounds, I say. Make the world an interesting place.