In case you haven't heard, there is a full-blown controversy surrounding CNBC's recent "Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge," with the network posting a message on its website saying that the "CNBC Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge ended May 25th. CNBC has been contacted by several contestants alleging unusual trading in violation of contest rules among some of the 20 finalists. Once these questions were raised, CNBC immediately launched a thorough investigation to determine who may have violated the rules."

Apparently, some contestants may have found ways to go in and change their orders after the market had closed, kind of like placing late bets at the track. While cheating is certainly bad, I had a hard time taking the contest seriously from day one. As the Motley Fool's Bill Barker wrote back in February, "this contest has stunningly little to do with 'investment strategy' and everything to do with maximum risk taking."

With the many thousands of people competing for the best portfolio performance over such a short period of time, I would argue that the portfolio was about little other than luck. I certainly wouldn't call the winner a "trading genius" or anything.

This brings me back to the cheating issue. In a contest that was essentially little more than a glorified lottery, who really cares if the winner didn't play by the rules? In fact, finding some strategy for beating CNBC's security system is probably more of an accomplishment than winning this crap shoot of a stock-picking contest.

Of course, I don't really think the prize should be given to a cheater, just as someone who cheated at bingo shouldn't get the prize. But it's hard to muster up a lot of righteous indignation for someone who found a way to outsmart an investing and trading contest that had little to do with investing or trading.

The latest issue of Barron's featured the results of the weekly paper's stock-picking contest for college students. Derek Zoch, a student at Wharton, had a strategy that smacks of classic contrarianism in the tradition of David Dreman. He looked for stocks making the largest moves, up or down, on each day and then bet against them. This strategy (with, of course, a huge amount of luck) led him to a 34.94% gain in six months.

Does this strategy make sense? It might. Jim Cramer has said that the market never rewards the best news and enough, and never punishes the worst news badly enough. But contrarians like David Dreman would argue that it's just the opposite: the stocks that are disappointing investors the most are often the best bargains. And, as Zoch bet, stocks making great gains are likely to be overrated.

Here is a hardcore contrarian strategy that you could try: each day for 2 weeks, buy the biggest % loser on the NYSE, and short the biggest gainer. Hold each stock for six months, and then close all the positions and see if you beat the market. Interestingly, one might extrapolate from Cramer's remarks that his approach could be just the opposite.