How to win the lottery, according to a Romanian-born mathematician who hacked the system, won 14 times, and retired on a remote tropical island (2024)

How to win the lottery, according to a Romanian-born mathematician who hacked the system, won 14 times, and retired on a remote tropical island (1)

  • You might want to know how to win the lottery — especially as the Powerball jackpot jumps to a $1.2 billion payout.
  • Stefan Mandel, a Romanian-Australian economist, developed a formula that's allowed him to win the lottery 14 times.
  • It's a six-step process designed to hack the system.

How to win the lottery, according to a Romanian-born mathematician who hacked the system, won 14 times, and retired on a remote tropical island (2)

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How to win the lottery, according to a Romanian-born mathematician who hacked the system, won 14 times, and retired on a remote tropical island (4)

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You're four times as likely to be struck by lightning than to win the lottery.

Those odds apparently don't apply to Stefan Mandel, a Romanian-Australian economist who's won the lottery 14 times, The Hustle reported in a feature story about the mathematician.

Mandel's first two wins were in his native Romania, where he was trying to earn enough money to get his family out of the then-communist country. His salary was just $88 a month.

He moved to Israel before settling down in Australia, where he won the lottery an additional 12 times.

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On Wednesday, October 4, someone could win the Powerball's $1.2 billion jackpot, the game's third-largest prize of all time, per Powerball.

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Plenty of lottery winners end up blowing it all — spending it on huge houses and Porsches, gambling it away, or getting slammed with lawsuits. Robert Pagliarini, a certified financial planner, previously told Business Insider that to prevent that, lottery winners should assemble a "financial triad" to help plan for their financial future.

"This includes an attorney, a tax person, and a financial adviser," Pagliarini said. "This financial dream team can help you make smart financial decisions and help you plan for the future. They can also help shield you from the media and from the onslaught of money requests from others."

The key way to navigate a sudden windfall like winning the lottery, Pagliarini said, is to keep calm and focus on the long term with pragmatic financial planning.

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As for Mandel, he now lives a quiet life in Vanuatu, a South Pacific island country known for its volcanoes and waterfalls.

While his scheme was legal at the time, new laws in the US and Australia render Mandel's scheme impossible nowadays. You can no longer buy lottery tickets in bulk and print your tickets at home — two key parts of Mandel's formula.

Here's the 6-step formula for how Mandel managed to make serious cash from the lottery:

  1. Calculate the total number of possible combinations. (For a lottery that requires you to pick six numbers from 1 to 40, that means 3,838,380 combinations.)
  2. Find lotteries where the jackpot is three times or more the number of possible combinations.
  3. Raise enough cash to pay for each combination. (Mandel rounded up 2,524 investors for his push to win the Virginia lottery.)
  4. Print out millions of tickets with every combination. (This used to be legal. Now you would have to buy the tickets right from the store.)
  5. Deliver the tickets to authorized lottery dealers.
  6. Win the cash. And don't forget to pay your investors. (Mandel pocketed $97,000 after a $1.3 million win in 1987.)

Read the entire feature about Mandel's feat in The Hustle.

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Watch: 4 lottery winners who lost it all

How to win the lottery, according to a Romanian-born mathematician who hacked the system, won 14 times, and retired on a remote tropical island (5)

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How to win the lottery, according to a Romanian-born mathematician who hacked the system, won 14 times, and retired on a remote tropical island (2024)

FAQs

How to mathematically win the lottery? ›

There is only one known way to ensure winning the jackpot. That is to buy at least one lottery ticket for every possible number combination. For example, one has to buy 13,983,816 different tickets to ensure to win the jackpot in a 6/49 game.

What is the formula for the lottery algorithm? ›

Understand the calculations involved.

To find the odds of winning any lottery, divide the number of winning lottery numbers by the total number of possible lottery numbers. If the numbers are chosen from a set and the order of the numbers doesn't matter, use the formula. r ! ( n − r ) !

Why was Tessie stoned in the lottery? ›

She was excommunicated despite an unfair trial, while Tessie questions the tradition and correctness of the lottery as well as her humble status as a wife. It might as well be this insubordination that leads to her selection by the lottery and stoning by the angry mob of villagers.

What is the best strategy to win the lottery? ›

How to increase your chances of winning? The unsurprising short answer is, buy as many tickets as you can within reason. That's according to Mark Glickman, a senior lecturer of statistics at Harvard University.

What are the 6 most common winning lottery numbers? ›

The most frequently drawn winning numbers from the main barrel are 17, 7, 11, 2, 3 and 9, while the least frequently drawn are 33, 15, 34, 31, 26 and 1. The most frequently drawn Powerball numbers are 19 and 2, while the least frequently drawn Powerball numbers are 14 and 16.

Is there a pattern to win the lottery? ›

Can you spot patterns by studying winning lottery numbers? Glickman also debunks the idea that studying past lottery number winners can help you spot patterns. “There is no pattern,” he said. “It's entirely random.”

Is there a math equation for the lottery? ›

If the order of the lottery number doesn't make a difference, then each lottery number is called a combination of numbers, and we calculate the probability of winning the lottery using the following formula: a n C r , where nCr is the number of combinations possible of the lottery number, and. r ! ( n − r ) ! .

Is there a way to predict winning lottery numbers? ›

The idea that you can win the lottery by looking for patterns in previous winning numbers is a common misconception. Lotteries are designed to be random and fair, and each number combination has the same odds of winning, regardless of past results.

Which number wins the lottery most often? ›

Most common main numbers
  • 10: Drawn 63 times.
  • 3: Drawn 62 times.
  • 17: Drawn 60 times.
  • 46: Drawn 59 times.
  • 14: Drawn 59 times.
  • 31: Drawn 58 times.
  • 64: Drawn 58 times.
  • 8: Drawn 57 times.
Mar 20, 2024

What does June 27 mean in the lottery? ›

June 27, in Shirley Jackson's 1948 short story, “The Lottery,” is the date when residents of a seemingly quaint small town gather to participate in a ritual act of violence. Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery' was first published in The New Yorker in June, 1948.

Why was the lottery banned? ›

In 1873 the Comstock Act banned every fraudulent lottery in the United States. While many lotteries in the early 1870s had only tenuous or no grounds to legality, the abundance of them made it impossible for postmasters to discern the legal from the illegal.

What is the climax of the lottery? ›

Answer and Explanation: The climax in ''The Lottery'' by Shirley Jackson is that the person selected by the lottery is not rewarded, but rather is stoned to death by the crowd.

Is there a trick to winning the lottery? ›

Lottery experts agree that the number one way to boost your chance of getting a winning ticket is to just get more tickets. Even though the probability of winning the lottery is low in general, the greater the amount of tickets you have, the more likely it is that one of these tickets will be the winner.

Do quick picks ever win the lottery? ›

So, is it better to play Quick Pick or to select your own numbers? Chances of winning the lotto between playing quick picks or selecting your own numbers are both equal. “Around 70 to 80 percent of Powerball players use Quick Pick tickets, and the same percentage of winning entries are Quick Picks,” one report said.

What is the best lottery number picking strategy? ›

Uncommon and Varied numbers

The key to this strategy is simple. Review the past several draws, make note of those numbers, and pick different ones! Also, vary the numbers chosen by not selecting two numbers within the same group or not selecting those that end with the same digit.

Is there any trick to picking lottery numbers? ›

The key to this strategy is simple. Review the past several draws, make note of those numbers, and pick different ones! Also, vary the numbers chosen by not selecting two numbers within the same group or not selecting those that end with the same digit.

What numbers are most likely to win the lottery? ›

If you plan to play the drawing, do you have numbers in mind? A new study reveals the lottery numbers you should play to win big: The number 28 is drawn most often across all lotteries, with an average frequency of 201.4. The numbers 16 and 39 are second and third, with average frequencies of 200.6 and 199, ...

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